Just when you thought things can’t get worse, they do.
Long story short, while prepping to upgrade the Forum to phpBB version 3 yesterday, I thought I’d do a little ‘pruning’ of posts first. Well, I accidently ‘pruned’ 3/4’s of the posts. No problem, I’ll just use the backup.
At least that’s what I thought I could do.
Turns out that cPanel was in the midst of a major upgrade and I couldn’t access the interface — not until after the upgrade was complete and by that time the latest forum backup available was the one with only 451 posts. Ugh.
Then, my attempt to convert the Forum was so botched that in mucking with the mySQL databases, I somehow trashed the main password to the ArticleLive database as well.
So, not only do we not have a forum. We don’t have access to the article database either.
Anyway, when my hero Steve Hetrick comes to the rescue (for the zillionth time), we’ll be back up and running and perhaps the lessons will have been learned once and for all. They are:
1. Backup first.
2. Hire professionals.
Cheers,
Ros
Hi Ros,
This is Denise here is very cold and SNOWY (can you believe it) Las Vegas. I have you ebook “The Super Affiliate Handbook” and I have been studying your NPT site daily. I was about to panic until I read your comments telling us of your problems when trying to upgrade. I won’t even try to understand what happened, sufice it to say, Wheoooooooooooooooo! I hope all goes well and I will look forward to seeing the information back.
Have a very Merry Christmas, a Happy Khannuka, and a very prosperous New Year.
Yours Sincerely,
Denise Chamie (in a very Cold and Snowy Las Vegas, NV ?)
Wow… snow in Vegas. That I would LOVE to see. Hope it does it again when I’m there in January.
And as you can see, the article database is up and running again. Just waiting for the Forum database repair. Thank goodness for technical wizards.
Woohoo!
Ros
Hi Rosalind,
Just wanted to say I’M Enjoying all of your post and all the Great Questions that
everyone ask..,
I Think you are a Great and Wounderful mentor..,Glad when you’re back up and
running..,
Sincerely,
Pastor
Hi Pastor,
My pleasure… and we are back up and running, partially. Well, the articles are and the Forum should be soon.
Cheers,
Ros
Mistakes teach us some of the best lessons. It is those who take chances that go further. At least this situation is recoverable. Of course, admitting your mistakes makes others respect you even more. 🙂
Hey Jim,
Either that or think I’m a complete goofball for tinkering with stuff I know almost nothing about… or, just enough to be dangerous. 🙂
Cheers,
Ros
This reminds me of the old Andy Griffith show when Aunt Bee tried to save money and bought a bunch of meat from another butcher than her usual butcher. She was going to store in their freezer. As soon as she bought the meat, the freezer stopped working.
Andy kept telling her to ‘call the man’! to come fix the freezer. Instead, she ran around town trying to find another place to keep it. The whole episode Andy kept telling her to call the man! (meaning to get a professional to come have a look!)
Sorry this happened Ros! I’ve got a mysterious moisture problem in my attic and have been putting off ‘calling the man’. lol Hope my roof doesn’t fall in now!
Thank God for ‘the men’!
Carolyn,
You didn’t tell us what happened to the meat. Now I need to know!
Cheers,
Ros
lol That’s the only part of the whole show I can’t remember Ros! I saw the episode about a kabazzillion years ago! I do recall Aunt B wheeling the meat in a radio flyer wagon into town, covered by a blanket or something. All the dogs in the neighborhood were behind her following closely. lol At the end of the show, Andy bought her a new freezer though, after he found out about the meat. I seem to recall that the meat turned out to be a ‘not so good’ quality. That’s why it was on sale.
The part I seem to think about the most though, is Andy telling her to just ‘call the man’!
I maybe way behind in knowing, but have you seen google’s new adwords keyword tool. I just found it yesterday as I use their other keyword tool all the time. I didn’t access it or try it as I don’t have any adword ads yet, but I thought I’d mention it in case you haven’t checked it out yet. You can find it at: http://www.google.com/sktool/#
Don’t know how good it is, but if it’s like everything else google does, its got to rock! Just like you Ros! Have a great night! Carolyn
Hey Carolyn,
Gotta love how memory works (or doesn’t work), eh?
I have been checking out the new Google Keyword Search tool, but because I’m in Canada, I can’t access the whole thing yet… “This tool isn’t available yet in your country/territory. If your billing address is outside the U.S. or UK, you’ll see a limited set of keyword ideas – regardless of whether you advertise for the website or not.”
Duh. That part I’m NOT impressed with, but everything else is really, really good.
Ros
Okay. Just let me see it when it is running. I learn alot from visiting this site.
Russ,
It’s running. Not well, but it IS running to the point where all the posts are back and one can submit a post. Just ignore the error messages. 🙂
Cheers,
Ros
Don’t worry, Be Happy, Rosalind. Yeah, those database are something else. I was trying to install a plug in, extension, my cpanel would not accept this software, so I have been on emailing customer support for the past 2 days, but now I got someone that created the software to help me install it using my FTP and mySQL, So I am still waiting to get my membership website up and running, Good post. Always remember, You can’t always get what you want. Who said that, oh, The rolling stones.
Take care,
Ray.
P. S.
Yeah, backing up files on Cpanel is always good to do.
Hey Ray,
No worries there. I’m really good at making lemonade and thank goodness I like lemonade.
Best of luck with your new membership site… those can be a bit of a bear depending on what you’re using. And even once the install is done, there’s still alot of tweaking to get things just right.
Cheers,
Ros
Thanks for reminding me to backup my sites. The Hostgator sites do not get backed up after I exceeded a certain number of files.
Hmmm… interesting that they just stop doing it. Fortunately, doing the backup is usually the easiest part of the process. 🙂
UGH, Ros!
Sorry to hear about your “double-whammy”! I hope you can get the forum back up soon! (. . .mmm-m-m. . .seems there was a thread of similar topic in there somewhere. . .;))
Keep smiling in the face of adversity, it always gets better and the experiences teach much!
~(G)Q
Hey Griff,
Ya, no doubt there’s more than one post in the forum about the perils of NOT doing backups and I probably wrote ’em all.
Oh and BTW, once the database has been restored, I have to figure out which HTML tweak I made that caused the ‘Submit’ post button to stop working. So much for making copies (backups) of the original pages before making changes, too.
UGH. 🙂
Ros
Use the command line interface to backup your MySQL database, so all of your parameters are correct, using Secure Shell, not telnet or ftp.
Execute a shell script to do it because I know you are a little lazy like me. Back up your MySQL database inside a protected directory where your top level domain is located then execute or integrate another shell script to make a tarball of your top level domain, then download your tarball for safe keeping on a regular basis.
I would be more than happy to do it, but you seem to have plenty of Gurus at your disposal. They will know what I’m talking about.
I feel your pain, if think.
Your friend always,
Frank and Shiva
You can even setup a cron job to run the the shell scripts on a regular basis.
Aaah Frank. That REALLY is all Greek to me.
I know how to backup from my cPanel interface … you know, like where it says ‘Backups’. 🙂
But as to shells and tarballs…. I’d be looking for those on some Alaskan beach.
And cron jobs. Well, anything with the word job in it seems like work to me.
Cheers,
Ros
Hi Rosalind,
I am a computer programmer, a hacker, a code cruncher, a troubleshooter—or you may call me Lucifer too, if you prefer, as end-users (lusers) do when facing a blank monitor and a locked keyboard and I explain what “reformatting” entails…
Excuse me for breaking a grin having read your two points:
1. Backup first.
2. Hire professionals.
According to Paul Ehrlich, “To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer.” I have a sticky-note on my monitor that reads, “Always code as if the person who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live.”
I will log-off with a story: Jesus and Lucifer have an argument as to who is the better programmer. This goes on for a few hours until they come to an agreement to hold a contest with God as the judge. They set themselves before their computers and begin. They type furiously, lines of code streaming up the screen, for several hours straight—a bolt of lightning strikes, taking out the electricity. Moments later, the power restored, God announces that the contest is over. He asks Lucifer to show his work. Visibly upset, Lucifer cries and says, “I have nothing. I lost it all when the power went out.”
“Very well,” says God, “let us see if Jesus has fared any better.”
Jesus presses a key, and the screen comes to life in vivid display, the voices of an angelic choir pour forth from the speakers. Lucifer is astonished. He stutters, “B-b-but how! I lost everything, yet Jesus’ program is intact! How did he do it?”
God chuckles, “Everybody knows… Jesus saves.”
Good luck,
Art 🙂
Art,
Thanks SO much for stopping by with your comments and story. LOVE the story.
As to my 2 points. I could drop #1 if I just followed #2. 🙂
Ros
Pruning posts? What, you thought this was your garden? LOL 😉
Leave our posts alone… they’re not weeds! hehe People took the
time to make them, what’s the harm in leaving them as-is? I’m
thinking of moving a forum I manage from a lesser known forum
platform to vbulletin, and it’s just so much easier to import all
the posts and usernames. What was your rationale for pruning?
Hi Alex,
Ya, maybe I am just a gardener at heart. My rationale for pruning was to clean up some of the unanswered (too late to answer) and really old posts. Won’t be doing that again… or at least not on auto-mode.
Cheers,
Ros
Hi Rosalind, where were you last week?
If I had found your post then, I’d probably saved days of frustration and aggravation.
Long story short, I’m getting started and after setting up my blog and blogging for a few weeks, I decided that I needed to move everything to a new domain name.
It was a disaster, so I eventually let it stay where it was.
I did have a backup though, but missed the part of hiring a professional to help me out 🙂
Warm regards and thanks for sharing. I feel better now!
Rov
Wow…. sounds like a total disaster. I have been considering a forum on my site and will definitely take your advise on hiring a professional! Thanks.
Hi Rosalind,
Don’t you just hate when this happens? Some times even when you back up things still go wrong.
I really like the great content you have and enjoy every bit of it.
Be well and prosper,
Mike
Hi Mike,
Thanks very much for your comment and kind remarks.
As for doing everything right and still having things go wrong, we’re getting a real good tast of that today.
UGH.
Ros
Professional also learn something from mistake. It’s the experience which made someone become a professional. ^^
I’m not an experienced web administrator, but I think there should be auto backup feature. That can make backup job easier.
Just my thought.
You have a great website anyway.
Suwitno
23 December 2008 12:54:56 Central Standard Time
Suwitno,
Yes, you are correct!
I am a Unix Administrator, i.e. a Professional System Administrator with approx. 9 years of grueling experience.
The backup process can be automated using a Shell Script and a Cron Job especially if it is a mission critical Web Site etc.
However, Ros would rather use the backup button in CPanel. To each his own way.
When I mentioned the word “Job” Rosalind sounded like Maynard G. Krebs on the Dobie Gills show. Maynard was beatnik, a forerunner to the Hippie movement.
When Dobie’s father would say it’s time to get back on the Job, or say the word work, Maynard would suddenly have to leave the grocery store on some allegedly urgent matter.
Cheers,
Frank, Shiva and Paulina
Hello Suwitno,
Thanks kindly for the vote of confidence!! 🙂
Cheers,
Ros
Just a little before holiday cleaning, eh?
Guess I’d better call you? Or are your plans for the forum etched in stone?
Hey Lowell,
No, the only thing left to clean are the floors.
AAAAARGH… we’re not sure what the heck is going on with the server today because the forum is only one part of the problem.
Steve is working on the issue as I write this.
Hopefully, we’ll be back up and running in a jiff.
Wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that I posted “Murphy is my Master” on my GTalk account? 🙂
Cheers,
Ros
Guess you’ve made up your mind about the forum?
Maybe I’d better call you?
Lowell
Hi Ros!
Glad I checked in here! I just tried to get on the forum and was left standing out in the cold, LOL!
Sorry to hear more problems abound, but know that all will be well in the end!
If there’s anything I can help with, I’m available!
~(G)Q
Hey Griff,
It’s cold this winter, to be sure. Things seem to be up and running all round again. I’m just in the process of confirming that’s the case.
Thanks kindly for the offer. Will let you know. In the meantime, enjoy the warmth down there in Mexico and a very Merry Christmas to you and yours!
Cheers,
Ros
The backups are automated and just need to have the files transferred offline on a regular basic. The scripts are available and will be put in place to automate the transfers.
Knowing about tar balls, shell scripts or cron jobs is not a requirement for getting things done, since there are administrators who handle that part of the process. Having a cron job is work, not none that site owners have to do. The software does it for you. So when a non-systems admin jokes about cron jobs being work, it is just that, a joke. Laugh at it. Enjoy it, because those who need to know, already do.
Even hard-core systems admins make mistakes, fix them, learn from them and move on without ridicule.
So, who wants a fudge bar?
Hey Jim,
A fudge bar sounds good although I’d rather have chips or Hickory sticks. Gee, how come it seems like all my favorite snacks seem to be computer related? 🙂
Ros
Ros,
I followed your reply from my inbox back to your site. I am glad you enjoyed my story.
Do not pay any attention to my ilk. Programming is an unnatural act—like Black Magic, best left to Necromancers and Alchemists. “Bleep” happens, and at the worst possible time, and in the worst possible way—a variation on Finagle’s law. (End-user rule: If the bleep hits the fan, blame the bleep on the bleep that originally compiled the bleep—and especially, blame the bleep responsible for the “user-friendly” point-and-click simplicity listed in the Manual that shipped with the bleep.)
I am only joking, of course. Levity trumps adversity. You are a perfect example. A dear friend Melissa Taylor, who posts on your blog occasionally, recommended you—urged, menacing, “Art, you got to read her book and visit her site, now!” since I voiced curiosity and a search for information on how to generate additional income at home online. (I am a network administrator and chief programmer for a major online player. Downsizing cut my department to a point, as I believe, that we can barely operate. Most of our work, now outsourced to independents on the cheap, is a harbinger of more “bleep” to come—and sooner than later. My contract expires in a couple of months, and I am not optimistic.)
I bought Site Build It!—after reading your review. I also plan to host a blog on my own server to support my main website. I spent the last few weeks studying your offering. In conclusion and by my assessment, you truly enjoy what you do, and it shows—no hype, no pressure. You genuinely care for your member subscribers. Melissa was right; you are, in deed, one-of-a-kind and second to none.
Art
Hello Art,
Reading your comment was a MOST pleasant start to this Christmas Eve day, thank you very much!
And you’re so right about levity trumping adversity. I see no other choice. If we got cheesed about every bump in the road or cried over every wrong-doing, there’d be no end to anger and sadness in this very strange world.
Your story too is a great example of how to trump adversity. Look ahead, see the signs and rather than fear or get angry about the apparently dismal prospects, you’re off and to the races. Awesome! Everyone should be so proactive.
So, a great big thanks to Melissa for sending you our way and here’s wishing you a very happy holiday and prosperous 2009 with your new Site Buildit! site and upcoming blog.
Cheers,
Ros
Sounds like a major disaster and it can ruin your business for a long time when that happens.Everything seems to be working again 🙂