Yippee! It Works!

Many thanks to Bluehost tech support John for his expertise. He was able to translate my error log and get my comments working again. A big THANK YOU, John! What’s also cool is that we may be related, lol!

What happened with my comments is that the database for the blog needed a little cleanup. John said this happens from time to time– databases get full of stuff and need some attention. So if you find yourself with such a problem with your blog, ask your tech support how to optimize/repair the database. It seems to cure a lot of ills.

Thank God, I can now resume regular broadcasting! I’m sorry for the comments problem– your comments are not lost, they are recorded in the error logs. I am going to attempt to restore them. Thanks for your patience!

Scared Out of My Skin

Well, we don’t know what happened– It seems to be my lot in life to thoroughly befuddle tech support with all my strange and baffling technical problems– but I lost four of my Bluehost blogs today. The ordeal is over and the posts have been restored, but WOW I think I just earned another handful of gray hairs again. I’m getting too old for this, just too old.

The Bluehost technician could not understand why all my posts were suddenly “File Not Found.” My blogs’ homepages were up, though. But if you tried to access an individual post or page, it was not there. He patiently spent an hour, sifting through individual files on my server, checking an older backup version of my blogs with the today’s problem files. Couldn’t detect any problems. But my posts were gone! At the technician’s urging, he suggested that I replace the current files with Bluehost’s stored backup of my files. But Bluehost’s files were several days old, and I’d written quite a number of posts across all those blogs in half a week. I didn’t want to go that far back in time– I’d have to rewrite all those posts I had done!

But guess what?

I had done a Full Directory Backup on all my blogs just 45 MINUTES PREVIOUSLY. We decided to use that backup, and as soon as the technician uploaded the files- voila! I was back in business! I almost fainted from relief. I think it nothing short of a miracle that I had created a backup of my directory within a sliver of time before the files failed.

We still don’t know what happened. The technician hypothesized that perhaps a plugin, or something I had done in my cPanel had overwritten something, or something like that. We couldn’t tell exactly what happened, just that some information was missing.

I am just so glad I’m back. And the ordeal is over. Now I’m going to lay down for a while and let my blood pressure go back down to normal, lol.

Oh– for those of you who have been following my tribulations with the “CPU Quota Exceeded” errors that I have been plagued with… I got a new WordPress theme for this blog, and I have had NO errors since. I strongly suspect my problems were due to the complexity of the last theme I had. Unfortunately, my New York Renovator saw a huge jump in traffic last week, and was sputtering a little. I may have to change the theme for that, as well. I love that theme, so it will be a difficult change. But I am finding evidence for my suspicion that if you use Bluehost, you really need a sleek, clean theme. I recommend them if you have a “small” blog– a personal blog with low to moderate traffic. Their tech help is incredible. However, if you get a lot of traffic, it’s best to go with a company that can handle larger strains on the server. f you decide to go with Bluehost, would you consider using my affiliate link HERE? I get credit for referring others to Bluehost.

UPDATE: The issue recurred again! Arg! Once again, my home page could be seen, but the posts, pages, comments, images could not be seen. The second tech support person could not help me out, she kept saying it was my permalink structure (which I knew it was not). I strongly suspect it had something to do with my htaccess file being rewritten after I enabled hotlinking protection on my blogs. It looks like hotlinking issues are common, and others have had this issue before me. I went into my cPanel, disabled the hotlinking protection, and in a few minutes, I was back in business. So that was it.

As a sidenote, it is cool to think that I knew more than the tech support with this issue. Ha!

A New Adirondack Blog

I happened upon a lovely new blog, devoted to the beautiful scenery and history of the Adirondack Park in New York State, called Adirondack View. The blogger, named Cedar, actually LIVES in the North Country (ohhhhh what a treat!). The photos are outstanding, and depict the glorious scenery so well! Cedar also presents the history of the areas she visits, something I love and try to accomplish here. I suggest you go over and take a look. It’s a real treat! This blog is going in my links list.

My Debutante

I’m pleased to introduce my daughter’s new blog, The Historian’s Archives. She’s a big history buff. Actually, she’s more like a history scholar. Her blog will focus on American history for the most part, although she’ll probably touch on current events and etc. She considers it her mission to educate folks with the accurate history of our country, and perhaps whet your appetite for learning more.

She has a list of excellent links, too!

Goings On

I am in the process of building several blogs/websites. Haven’t had too much time to post here as of yet, just little stuff.

I’ve had a resource type of blog in the works for months, Mrs. Mecomber’s Scrapbook, that I haven’t really attended to. I’ve decided to go full throttle with the blog now, and it is requiring a lot of my attention. I love the template, a free one I found at Mashables called Garland.

It’s a blog borne out of my own travails as an early computer/internet user/homeschooling mom. I remember being clueless about a lot of things: how to download software, how to configure images and files, where to find good reference sites. Even with the Internet now nearly in every household (or at the very least, accessible to Americans) there are still lots of people who appreciate a good list of sources and some good simple instructions about simple and basic tasks. If there is anything I love, it’s helping people with things I have learned myself.

So that’s what’s up here. Also, some personal problems on the homefront have my attention, too. The Upstate New York economy is frightfully bad, and the shockwaves are rippling across the board.

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