A Byootaful Life – The Sequel!
We’ve been having some really lovely rain recently – you know, the sort that hangs around on and off all day, keeping your clothes on the line nice and damp, creating a muddy pond for you to walk through in order to check the mail and, well, basically being a pain in the backside. It wasn’t particularly heavy and there was no lightning, so I was rather surprised when I awoke one morning to realise we’d had a blackout sometime during the early hours. I didn’t really think much of it until I went to post on my blog … and discovered it didn’t load.
Phill hosts my blog from home, using my old university computer, so I went upstairs to check it. It was on and humming along nicely. I was stumped (yes, the extent of my computer knowledge is checking to see if things are plugged in and turned on) so I asked Phill to check it when he got home from work.
So on Thursday night we went into the ‘investigation’ feeling positive, but after a couple of hours we realised that this wasn’t just a simple malfunction. The hard drive was dead. My host was dead, which meant my blog was dead – and all of my blogging history over the past two years was gone. Two years of hard work – posts, photos, links and comments – all gone.
It was a lot to take in. I’m not a blogaholic but it was still a shock to the system to lose so much work. At that point, I realised I had a choice. I could throw in the towel, chuck a tanty and give up OR, I could start again from scratch.
Guess which option I chose?
The first thing we did (after replacing the hard drive – the good thing about living with a geek is the constant supply of random computer parts that he seems to pull out of the wardrobe) was install the latest version of WordPress. Can you believe I was still on 2.2.2? Let’s just say keeping up to date is not my forte. After the install, I looked around for a new theme – something different, something fresh, signaling a new chapter in my blog. I chose this one because it’s loud, but not overpowering. I’m still modifying it but already I am happy with how it looks. Much better than the default template my site sported for a while after the WordPress installation – I was chomping at the bit to get rid of that!
I’m still figuring out things, trying to remember the plugins and alterations I had in my last blog. The sheer amount of stuff I’ve lost is overwhelming, but I’m taking it one step at a time. My three (quite large) blogrolls are gone, so I have to build those again from memory using bloglines for help. If I linked to you previously and don’t now, I’m sorry – please tell me in a comment and I’ll add you!
So anyway, just in case anyone actually visited here and wondered why they were getting a 404 page, that’s what happened. Rain is evil. But maybe this is a good thing in the long run.
I hope you enjoy A Byootaful Life – the Sequel.
Wow, you really copped the brunt of it! We just had the never ending rain… never lost power or anything.
It sucks that you’ve lost a lot of stuff, but great that you’re still with us. I love the layout too!
(If you could pretty please point me in the direction of some layouts for my own .com once it’s up and running, that’d be awesome. You always have gorgeous layouts!)
I’ve got a friend who’s computer just died with a week left on the warranty. She’s just been told that her hard drive is cactus too, and that there’s just about no chance of recovering anything. Bad news is, she was in the middle of backing everything up when it happened. Worse still, she’s probably lost EIGHT YEARS of photos. Ouch.
Oooh – shiny.
I was actually rather surprised when the default “Welcome to WordPress” post turned up in my feed reader, but at least you’re back with smile (or that’s how it appears
). If you’re feeling nostalgic, I think my feed reader goes back to the end of 07 but no images or comments.
This layout looks nice too – good choice to start over with
Computers are hard! You know, I noticed that I can see your old posts in my Google Reader, so I ‘m wondering if there’s some way to use your feed to recover your old posts? I know nothing about computers, but it seems as if your work is still out there, there should be some way to get it back.
Hmmm .. so wordpress itself does not keep your blog somewhere?
Well … out with the old and in with the new! and yes … we statesiders were wondering if the lights went out in Australia and stayed out!
Well, out with the old, in with the new!
(maybe wordpress has you all saved somewhere)
Hi Puddy & Kate! We are so sorry to hear about you losing all your posts and pictures! And so glad to see you here!!
Your FL furiends,
and Maverick
Kelly – I am so unbelievably picky when it comes to templates and even then there are always things that bug me, so THANK YOU for saying I have nice templates! Eight years of photos gone is a very bad thing – luckily my laptop with all my photos is fine – except maybe I should back up….
Scott T – I’m glad it showed up in your reader at all because my rss feeds are playing up (methinks). I hated that default theme and nearly died when I saw it, haha!
Daisy – I will definitely try that, thankyou! I saw them too when I was checking my feed, so at least I can keep those. At least not everything is lost!
Rabbits’ Guy – Sorry about the comment glitch! Looks like I can recover some of my stuff, but not all. Oh well, it’s better than nothing!
Samantha & Mr Tigger and Maverick – Thank you for your lovely comment! I’m glad to be giving it a second try – who knows, maybe this time round will be better!!
Nice new theme! Shame about what happened though. Now that you are starting anew, you may want to check out this WordPress Database Backup plugin – it does it automatically and emails the backup:
http://www.ilfilosofo.com/blog/wp-db-backup
This way, if this ever happens again (touch wood!), you can recreate your blog quite easily.
Mooiness – I will do that, thanks. If there IS a next time, I want to be prepared!
I was wondering what happened. I tried to get to your blog the other day and it gave me some weird error message. I was going to email you but then I checked back and it was fine. I’m SO sorry you lost everything…that’s awful!
THC – It’s nice to know you tried to pop by – makes me feel loved! Luckily the blog wasn’t down for too long – that’s because of Phill – he’s fabulous!