This post will interrupt my previously scheduled post/thought workflow.
LifeInFIRE is ALIVE again. Crashed, moved, updated, new and improved.
Wow, when in the zone, when in a flow state, with nobody around to interrupt you, it is a magical place. A place that I hadn’t been in for a long time. I didn’t expect to be encompassed in the zone today.
Rarely do I get so into something that I lose track of time. I usually tend to jump from activity to activity every 30-45 minutes or so just because I think “Oh, that is what I want to do now.”
I’m going to share how I zoned today totally by accident. It amazed me how 9 hours of interesting tasks, challenges, and learning felt like 2 or 3 interesting hours.
Blogging
For years I have maintained a list of thoughts/topics for blog posts. Dozens of the thoughts have a couple of key notes listed so I remember what I was thinking about waiting to be expanded upon. Some of the thoughts are more developed and just waiting for some final processing to then be posted.
This is where the irony occurs. The other day I was creating the post and had a brand-new problem loading an image. Images are not something I use very often but I’ve never had any problems with them in the past.
After a 3rd attempt to resolve the image insertion failure, I decided to take a different route and update all my web software and tools. The first step was, of course, to back up the website. In the middle of this normal backup activity, the backup sputtered out. Then my blog was down. But it got worse, the website’s management console had crashed as well. This is extremely double-catastrophic.
Season over?
So, I’ve had a few problems with the website over the past couple of years. These include: I don’t want to pay $70 per year and install an SSL certificate for the limited readers I have (lazy and cheap).
I have noticed GoDaddy’s price going up dramatically since I started webpaging 20 years ago. Because of the price increases I’ve always wondered about other hosting companies—especially with Godaddy’s outrageous SSL charge compared to “included” certificates at most other (even low-cost) providers.
There have been problems with upgrading my site to a new PHP version causing problems with my wordpress theme. Rather than find the root cause(s) I have to pay $30 per year for old PHP “support” in order to keep my website’s look and functionality.
I once had to go through a panic recovery activity after a PHP upgrade blew up my site.
So, on Thursday evening the website AND management console were down. I couldn’t do anything. I decided to sleep on it. It’s so rare that when I have a problem I say “screw it” and go to sleep. My nature is to be a “fixer” or a “solver of problems.”
In addition to the technical “glitches” of the past, which were kind of interesting, I didn’t want to take the time and put in the effort to learn the root of the problem—I found it time-consuming to create each blog post. Yes, to finish and post my thoughts…even at only twice per month was impacting my freedom (a little bit). Lame excuse—but my LifeInFIRE had moved into a higher gear and there was a LOT of great stuff going on. Most of the great stuff was away from home, and I don’t travel with a laptop anymore.
Anyway, I went to sleep Thursday night with the full intent of not taking the time to try and recover my blog. Blogging season/phase complete—completed for me.
The next morning was Friday the 13th. I had no intention to even think about revisiting/fixing the blog. It felt fine to let the blog sleep in peace forever.
Hmmm
…I wonder…—that’s my curious brain doing its normal processing—what happened with my website’s software? Uh oh, turns out I didn’t make it retired from blogging for even 36 hours. My tech-resolution nature started to take over.
At 9am I started trying to figure out my files/software. I checked out my previous backups and there were files directories, plugins, and utilities EVERYWHERE. There are multiple tools at my hosting company. I truly don’t understand too many of them because I used probably <5% of the power of my hosted account. It’s not like LifeInFIRE is a full web production.
At noon I had completed a couple of “archiving” activities to allow my site to sleep permanently and still have my files and database on my local PC.
At 1p I decided to see if I could restore my base software backup from March, 2 months ago. Everything came right up with a few missing (recent) posts. Wow, not bad. It was like March at LifeInFIRE. I thought, “I can just ignore those posts and continue forward if I want to.” I can’t believe it, blog retirement is failing right in front of my keyboard and screen.
I decided to just try and slap my database backup from this morning (posts, comments, etc.) over the top of the March software. Bam, I refreshed my browser and my site was 100% back to where it was on Thursday, June 12 before the crash.
The entire “screw it” restore and overlay took less than 10 minutes to revive everything. However, this could have easily crosslinked so many files and caused irreparable catastrophic damage. But since I was going to let the blog sleep (retiring from 9 years of time-consuming blogging—to be selfish with my upcoming time) there was no risk.
It turns out I learned multiple new website/wordpress/blogging skills. I LOVE learning new things.
Great, now what?
At this point my blog is back online and nobody can tell anything went really bad for a while.
At 1p I decided to see if I could get my site over to a new hosting company. I looked at their “migration” information page. It looked logical and simple enough so I signed up for a hosting account.
It turns out the next hour was wasted because the “managed wordpress hosting’ I decided to buy switched to “premium web hosting” in my cart which the “compare” page said Premium had different tools and support than the wordpress stuff. What?!
I chatted with the new host and they told me to cancel my plan, ask for a refund, and then purchase a new wordpress hosting plan. I canceled, etc., and tried to buy a “wordpress” plan, but again just the premium web hosting plan popped into my cart. After a bunch of hassle, I signed up for the plan I had just canceled. Come on! The other end of a chat may be helping MANY people, be careful taking actionable advice from them.
New Home
I followed the export and import migration process and it estimated 20 minutes to 24 hours, but my tiny website was up in a temp domain in about 5 minutes.
The good: it had https SSL. Bad news, I looked very similar to the new PHP problems I had at Godaddy so I worked on this some—the side widgets, the continue reading layout, the title bar, the background color, etc. It took about 3 hours to get it 99% like it was before but with the new SSL, lower price, etc.
I also learned some things, remembered some things from 2016, and overall enjoyed the repair/build/tune/improve process.
It was really nice to be challenged. It was nice to take on a challenge and be successful after deciding that the task wasn’t something I was interested in. I regrouped and it all seems to be turning out well.
Open items:
I’m still not able to get post images to upload. I think I need to learn the exact uploads dir and fix the privileges. That’s normal and good to relearn.
UPDATE: I couldn’t let this image failure issue linger. It took me about 20 minutes (a few days after this posted) to hunt around for the uploads directory path and the permissions settings. All fixed for the Sonic Boom post–a much better post than this. I feel a sense of pride, maybe just a reminder that I’m not a total slacker.
At this point, this website/blog is alive until the next decade if the hosting company stays in business for the 4 years of hosting that I’ve prepaid. I just need to keep my domain paid up each year.
I don’t know what new content there will be from my mind and fingers. Hopefully, my two thoughts per month will continue, but who knows, LifeInFIRE is pretty busy and I’m a slacker.
I LOVE my life—my LifeInFIRE.
*** Nothing in this article is to be construed as financial advice. I am not a financial planner, nor do I pretend to be. You should always consult your own professional when seeking advice. This post is not a piece of literary mastery, just a random thought I had.