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Mar 062012
Carja
Mar 052012
I look like I should know all about computers and programming. Yeah, looks can be deceiving.
I like computers and what they can do. I use them plenty and I know enough to get by. I can figure things out if given the time and I have the inclination to do so (I often don’t).
Why am I mentioning this? Because for all that I should know, I still make colossal errors and recently, I committed a huge one:
I lost my site, not once, but twice. You’d think I’d have learned my lesson after the first time, but you’d think wrong!
But how did it happen?
It all started innocently enough. On Thursday (February 23rd), I got a message from WordPress that one of the plug-ins I was using (Manga+Press) had an update available. Up to that point, I’d never had any problems with updating plug-ins, so I updated without thinking twice about it. That was when the Funnies navigation buttons disappeared. The new version of Manga+Press used a new post type to distinguish comics and no longer recognized the old posts. And the new plug-in didn’t even work!
I tried other plug-ins that were developed to publish webcomics on WordPress and they all had issues. I couldn’t get the comics to show where I needed them to. They didn’t like the theme I was using. The Funnies wouldn’t show in my media library.
As I was playing around with them, I did SOMETHING that made my site go blank. I couldn’t figure out what. I thought I had done damage to my WordPress files, so I tried uninstalling and reinstalling on the server. It didn’t occur to me that I should make a back-up first. Don’t do this! WordPress didn’t recognize any of my old files and lost all my posts. I was upset. I spent a good deal of my weekend fretting about this.
Then on Monday (February 27th) I had a rare intelligent thought: Ask Bluehost (my web provider) for a backup restore. They responded with three backups I could use. I chose the oldest so I would also undo the plug-in update. They restored the files, but WordPress only reverted back a few hours (I still don’t get this). The comics issue remained.
I thought I could deal with it. But my files all looked messy. I HAD to fix things (I’m obsessive that way). And I tried. Only I made things worse. On Wednesday (February 29th) I screwed up WordPress again. And this time the backup restore didn’t work. My tech support guy tried to restore the WordPress database, but that didn’t work either. I would need to start the site all over.
I hesitated. Did I really want to do all that work again? Any picture files would be okay. I had them all saved on my computer. But there were a lot of posts that I wrote directly on the site. I had no backups of them. Well the site is back up and the content is returning, so obviously I persevered. Alls I can say (and I said this on Facebook earlier) is, “Thank goodness for Google caches!” Whatever posts I was worried about losing, I found. I saved them all on my hard drive and now I just need to repost them. Some (okay, most) old news posts won’t be coming back though…it ain’t news anymore.
So what have I learned?
- I’m dumb. Really dumb. Spectacularly so, in fact.
- Backup the site regularly. Turns out WordPress has an option for this. I’ll be making use of it from now on.
- If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. If I’m happy with the way a plug-in works, why update it?
- Write locally, post globally. Instead of writing directly in WordPress, I’ll write in Wordpad on my computer and then copy and paste to WordPress on the server. If anything happens to the WordPress database, I won’t lose all my posts again.
- This site means a lot to me. Not many people read the site (yet), but I was devastated at the thought of losing all the work I’ve put into it.
Mar 022012
I smiled at the groundhog. It was my very best smile. The one I reserve for suckers. The Big Oonch played big, but he was no match for my charm. He’d follow me across the Irascible Sea and back. I’d settle for him watching my back.
I knew what I was planning was crazy. Those wolves were no pushovers. If they caught us, we’d be in serious trouble.
I peeked through the window one last time. Funny, furs putting windows in a building underground. I guess they like looking out into pitch darkness.
The wolves were deep in their cups. It was time to move.
“Just act natural,” I told my new partner as I pulled my cloak up to hide my face. Oonch followed suit.
We walked into the inn and made our way to the stairs leading up to the rooms acting as though we were just another couple heading to our room for the night. The common room was busy enough with patrons and staff that we didn’t immediately seem out of place. The wolves didn’t pay any attention to us at least.
Once upstairs, I shed my cloak and pawed it over to Oonch. “You stay back over there in the shadows,” I told him before repeating the plan. “If anybody comes up, I’ll need you to have my back. Think you can handle that?” The groundhog nodded, but he didn’t look any happier about it than he had when I first told him what I had in mind. It wasn’t much of a plan. We were counting on nobody coming up while I was working, which admittedly was asking for a lot.
The rooms weren’t locked. They never are in inns like these. Quietly I slipped into the first room. A cursory look was all it took to figure out this wasn’t the right one. The clothes strewn about indicated a fur had been using this room for at least a couple of days.
The next room was luckier. I recognized the lead wolf’s cloak hanging on the post. I hurriedly started my search. The sooner I found the scroll, the sooner we could get out of here. Fortunately, the wolves weren’t carrying much on them. I was able to rummage through their rucksacks quickly. Problem was, no scroll!
“Looking for this?” The raspy voice surprised me. I spun around to see the wolves standing there. And standing in front of his pack, the lead wolf had the scroll in his paw! Where was the Big Oonch?
“Yoink!” That’s when things went crazy.
Mar 012012
Mar 012012
UPDATE 3: Everything is back up! (Well everything I wanted back up…some old news posts I didn’t feel were worth putting back up)
UPDATE 2: All the stories and blogs are back up, including this week’s intended story (no blog for this week).
UPDATE 1: The Funnies (French and English) are all back up, including this week’s intended strips! Not only that, but the navigation problem is resolved. I found a plug-in that adds navigation tabs on posts of the category currently being viewed (they’re on the right and left of the screen when you’re in a post). There’s no button to go to the first post, but that’s an acceptable compromise for something that works on both the English and French strips. No more manual coding for me! WHEE!
I couldn’t get anything to work right anymore and after screwing things up worse and worse, I’m at the stage where I have to start over now. All my old blogs are lost, as is anything I wrote directly on the site (as opposed to writing in Word and cutting and pasting). Eventually I’ll get most of the content back up.