I’m feeling very gloomy about the state of my website today. Dreamhost told me I needed to update PHP, but when I did, my sites wouldn’t come back. I tried to restore them and the restorations failed and they sent me the most obnoxious email in response. This line in particular…
“Howevvvvver… we actually make no
guarantees about availability of backups, and highly recommend you
always keep your own copies of all important data. Please follow the
link below for instructions with this:”
The link below sends you to instructions for backing up your data which is kind of irrelevant if your data is already gone. Rude, don’t you think? I’m going to be leaving them as a provider just for that line. The last thing I need when my sites are failing to restore is my provider being an asshole.
Fortunately, I had backed up my data: complete XML files for both sites. Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out at all how to turn those backups back into my sites. Their help system was useless, they don’t respond to emails, and their customer support system kept sending automated replies to my emails explaining why they weren’t able to help me. Goodbye, Dreamhost.
My friend Lynda told me to make a wordpress site, upload my data, and redirect the Dreamhost sites to the wordpress site until I can find a better long-term solution, so that is what I’ve done. But for whatever reason, WordPress is choking on my site. Trying to get the post window open took forever and every minute, I get an error message that “Saving the draft failed.” Such a pain!
Not to mention that the menus on the site are screwed up for some reason and I can’t figure out how to do a mailing list sign up without having it be a pop-up which I seriously, seriously don’t want. I loathe those pop-ups, I do NOT want one on my site. They’re so damn rude! And that purple color in the header? Um, no. Just no, no, no.
Fortunately, I am at my dad’s house in Mount Dora, so I have internet. Unfortunately (that’s seeming like the theme of this blog post — the fortunate, unfortunate thing), this isn’t remotely what I want to write about, think about, or do. *sigh* I have so many more interesting things to write about and so many better things to do! But for the moment, this is what we’ve got. I’m going to try to post, so that I can see whether it’s working at all, and then I’m going to go back to messing around with the behind the scenes details. And I hope — fervently! — that my next post is going to be far more fun and back to focusing on travels and writing, not website design.
Sorry about your lovely website. This is a slightly different subject but if you’re ever out and about and want a desktop to work on, I have found free easy access at local libraries all over the country.
Good luck getting your media presence back where you want it to be.
I’ve had libraries suggested to me before, so I’ll definitely keep them in mind. Lots of welcome centers have internet, too. Mostly I’ve found, though, that searching for internet is a pain, especially if I need it for an extended period. I don’t want to waste my days in the search for a connection, I’d rather just appreciate it when I have it. And not need it, in general!
I have trouble with WordPress at times too, so don’t feel alone there. I do prefer it overall to other blog programs. I don’t think any of them are without their pitfalls. Just do what you have to do and move forward… Hugs…