Tuesday, July 8th, 2008
I lost my photo gallery in the move to a new host. I suppose “lost” is the wrong word to use, as I intentionally did not restore it. I actually forgot about it completely until a friend mentioned it to me one day…. in realizing it was still there, I decided that it would be one more thing to renovate on the site. It was a relic, and an oversized, bloated one at that.
I’ve been alternating between researching new options to display pictures and looking through the first batch of pictures I’ve taken in years (yes, years) while on a hiking trip the other day.
I go through a lot of mental wrangling when it comes to taking pictures. (But then, don’t I with everything?) I switched to a digital SLR a few years back and I feel as though I lost something important in the transition. I don’t think I’ve ever been strong on the technical aspects of photography, but this has really allowed me to slack off. So while the camera has more than made up for itself in the volume of pictures it allows me to take, it allowed me to completely let go of the understanding of the way things work. There was a finite amount of tries to get the shot right with a manual SLR. I had to calculate to get the shot the way I wanted it. I’d like to get that back with my digital.
Another thing is, I adore color. I’ve always found that the pictures taken on my digital SLR have been lackluster in comparison to what is in front of me. I’m being pretty harsh on myself as I look through these shots and recall how deep the colors were when viewing them in person and the comparison to what I captured. I’ve always been frustrated with the idea that one needs to “retouch” the shots in a photo program to get them to look their best. I’m trying to move away from that… Reading through a photo retouching thread last night on Flickr, I came across someone commenting on “purists.” It’s not that you’re doing anything different from the way it used to be with the darkroom process - there was certainly retouching going on there - it’s just that the tools are now different. And you know what, he’s right.
So, I think one of the things I’d like to tackle in the near future is relearning the technical aspects of photography and sharpening my understanding of them - learning to work with my DSLR rather than letting it dull my abilities.
The 27 that made the cut.
I’ve also opened a Flickr account.
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Sunday, July 6th, 2008
I went to upgrade my wordpress blog to 2.5 before doing any more major theme changes so I could be sure that whatever I did was compatible with the new release. Of course, even though there was this nagging little voice at the back of my mind telling me not to use the Wordpress Automatic Upgrade plugin, because I trust myself more than some automatic plugin…. I figured I’d take a shortcut, just this once.
Admin panel GONE and in its place a nasty 404!
Restoring backups of site, nothing.
Searching for a solution to the problem turns up nothing but one other person who had the same problem a month ago - with no response to their post.
After toggling a bit with it and getting nowhere, even after purging that damnable plugin off my site I purged the whole thing and did a fresh install. It went off without a hitch until I restored the old blog database. I am now getting blank pages with the main theme. I am hoping the same doesn’t happen with others.
I don’t know what’s up with this, but this past hour has been completely frustrating. I was planning on installing some flickr widgets and some homemade book “widgets” (not really, since they aren’t interactive) but as usual with computing - Murphy’s Law. So if the site is on and off disappearing and it looks like it’s been completely purged, you know why!
Edit: Ok, I should have searched for this problem following the clue I found that tipped me off to change the theme. Apparently this seems to be a known issue, and reuploading the theme fixes it. Of course, this is when my FTP program decides to start acting strange and showing the wrong files. WS_FTP how I miss you.
Edited again: Ok, the upgrade to 2.5 was totally worth it. The new admin interface, particularly the posting one, is wonderful to work with in comparison to the old.
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Friday, July 4th, 2008
So, as I mentioned in my last post, I’d noticed that my site was down a couple of days ago. I waited a few hours to see if it would clear up, but to no avail. At this point I emailed their technical support to ask them if they could tell me if the problem was on their end or mine and got back this gem - “you need to check the errors with your Web site by your own. If you do not wish to do so you can signup for a new account.”
Frustrated with this response, I called up to see what the problem was. Apparently my site was on a server that they shut down as part of their transition to a new, horrendously slow and aggravating platform. They could not migrate it because it is “too complex.” The customer service guy could not give me further information beyond that. My only “solution” was to backup my site, open a new account with them and set the whole thing up again. (The CS guy sounded embarrassed about this.) Also, I had to get the data off my webspace because it is going to be deleted in seven days. Here’s the kicker - I was notified about NONE OF THIS. There are certainly times when I won’t visit my own site for a week or two and it all could have been gone. I know that part of the fault would have been with me for not regularly backing my stuff up, but regardless, as a responsible webhost they should have notified me of all of this without my having to call customer support.
I was debating between staying with them and taking the “devil you know” approach (and having to deal with their terrible vdeck 3 platform with mysql/phpmyadmin speeds that make me want to pull my hair out) or switching and possibly running into worse problems down the road. Luckily, I learned a lot in the past couple of days because I found an amazing forum about web hosting that is a trove of information.
The company that can be credited for this debacle is ipower - aka Endurance International. I ended up choosing the hosting company Hawk Host, but more later.
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Thursday, July 3rd, 2008
I’m still fanning myself in disbelief that having moved my site on the fly to a new host without doing extensive research (well, that would be on the methods… I DID do hours of research to find a good host though…) has (kind of) worked!
My site has been down due to the utter stupidity and incompetence of my former webhost…. But I’ve managed to switch with minimal hassle, I think. (crossing my fingers as I test each thing out!!!)
This place really is in desperate need of an overhaul though. Just a small update, I will get into more details later.
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