When I started blogging I was glad I took the time to set up my site from scratch. I followed the slightly more difficult route to getting my words out there.
I elected to set up my own domain name on a hosted server and build a site myself. I knew I was making life hard for myself but I thought it would be worth it in the end.
Until last week I hadn’t had cause to regret my decision.
My decisions fell down around my ears and I started to curse my luck.
Picture: Darkhood1337
I don’t know what happened. I don’t know whether it was the server being rebooted or my automatic upgrade to the latest version of WordPress, but something happened that caused me to lose the comments table in my database. Of course, at the time I had no idea what had happened and naturally assumed that it would be a small glitch and it would be easily resolved.
Having already reported to the host that my site had experienced slow running, I tagged the missing comments on the end and expected that the technician at the other end would press a few buttons and everything would be back to normal.
Unfortunately for me, this happened over Thanksgiving weekend causing my inquiry to be passed from pillar to post with each technician dealing with only part of the problem and ignoring the rest. Factor in that I’m in the UK and my emails were not being dealt with until the end of the working day in the US, there was a full 24 hours between each interaction. It was painful.
The end result is that having failed to make my own backup of the site, I learnt that the host didn’t have one either. At least not one with my comments intact. The only thing the host could do for me was to inform me I’d need to replace the missing table myself. Great.
I mourned the loss of 1100 comments for a while and then set about the simple task of replacing the missing table, which was sure to be an automatic process and take me a few minutes.
Four hours later, much research, a crash course in mysql and phpmyadmin whilst blindly clicking buttons and hoping for the best, I rebuilt the entire table from scratch using a combination of guess work and intuition.
I still have no idea whether the table will hold up but all I can do, is give it a try.
The comments work now, so feel free to write in there whatever you like.
All of your first comments will be moderated just to help in the battle against spam.
I’ll tell you this much though, I was very close to setting up a new site. It would have been quicker and easier to do so – and I might still do it anyway just as a contingency.
Thanks to all for your messages of support. Special thanks to Sean Platt for providing me with a plugin which will automatically back up my data.
So there you have it. A freshly laid blanket of snow ready for you to write your names in – and ANYTHING else you’d like to write or ask or shout – go ahead!
Weeeeeeeeeeeeeee
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