[Update: Restoration of the blog has been underway. Things are not nearly as dire now as originally reported. If it still is missing things when you look at it, please try refreshing the page.]
Some surprises are not very nice.
If you are a regular reader, you might’ve noticed the blog is looking rather strange at the moment, and a bunch of things are missing. Little things, such as all of the styling, fonts, colors, my banner, menus… (!) It just suddenly appeared this way today. Two calls to my domain/web host later, and they claim there’s no evidence it was hacked, although that would be the most sensible answer. They thought they might be able to restore it to its former state… but then couldn’t. After the last tech support call, they say they will make another attempt at opening the database that seems to be at the heart of this, um, hair-pulling moment.
I keep reminding myself that it’s only the styling, menus, banner, etc. I still have posts and photos. It could be worse.
But then my inner depressive cries out, “Don’t you remember how many hours it took to put in all those settings, colors, menus, banner….?!”
Alas. I just thought I’d post an explanation for the weird look and lack of some things on the blog. It will return in something resembling its usual state. Either it will be restored by my host… or I’ll be spending several hours clenching my teeth doing it the slow and frustrating way.
I’m curious — has anything like this ever happened to any of you who use WordPress?
I’d like to be able to say I have the answer. But I can’t. In fact, I’m so technically illiterate I still haven’t got everything working again after last week’s crash. I’m taking the laptop back again tomorrow.Just bought a new printer, but I’m afraid to load the software in case I lose it again!
Sorry, no help.But I’ll have a drink for you!
A drink sounds like an excellent idea! Thanks. And good luck on yours! ARGH!
Hiss and spit. And repeat.
Glitches like this are distressing and infuriating – out of all proportion. And the thought of all that effort to return your blog to its former glory is making my eyes leak in sympathy.
Hopefully the post person will bring you some distraction shortly.
I always appreciate your empathy. Thank you. It was a rather distressing… um, surprise… when I went to my blog today. I’m beginning to think maybe I should take this as an opportunity. I’d thought of maybe moving to a new theme, but redoing everything was such a daunting prospect, I never seriously put more than a casual thought into it. However, if I’m going to have to tediously suffer through doing it all over again anyway? Still, I really would’ve preferred to do this when I had time and energy to do it, or at least felt like doing it. It always feels like one tiny step forward and 10 big back. I managed to finish one lousy book block for Book Art Object the other day and was elated. Progress! Maybe I will finally get some work done! And then my blog suddenly needs attention.
And did I mention we are going to lose our electric this evening? They’ll be pulling the plug on us overnight for “maintenance.” At least it’s not the dead of winter here. The last couple of times they did something like this, it was unbearably cold. So, I won’t be online too long. Sigh.
Post person… hmmm… now that sounds interesting…. :-)
Bummer!! I think we should all go out for drinks. The blog looks good to me. Try not to stress (easy for me to say). I think if you have your photos and posts you are ok……
Thanks Pamela. Drinks sound very good indeed. It’s actually looking a lot better now, but still more to go… It took over an hour just to figure out how to get my banner back… the settings are convoluted, and there are multiple overlapping ones that cancel each other out for… oh, just about every element. I don’t know if it’s my theme or if WordPress is this wretched for everyone. Ridiculous! But, yes, you are very right–as long as the posts and pictures are there, I’m really, really lucky! It could’ve been so much worse.
Yes, have that happen… I even lost my whole blog at one time because I tossed it accidently… Lucky enough I do have backups of my blog and website… It is a lot of work if you have to put it all back up. But you know what, people come in the first place to read your writings and look at your photographs, so styling is more or less second… People who really love your writing will come anyway…
Thanks Catherine! So true– I think most people usually only read it via a feed reader or some such anyway.
The thought of losing a whole blog is enough to give me the chills! Yike!! I thought I had a backup as well, but… well… that’s another story! Let’s just say I could never have a career in IT…
(I hope your packers have materialized? Sigh.)
Oh no Ellen, how horribly horribly frustrating for you. I’ve only had limited experience with the paid for version of WordPress, so I can offer nothing constructive at all.
I second the idea of drinks though – a good strong one or two!
I hope it isn’t too horrible restoring the settings and things.
Drinks all around, yes! Thanks! I appreciate the sympathy.
It was initially vaguely horrid, yes, but fortunately I’d kept a printout (roughly an inch thick!) of the settings from when I first moved to WordPress. Things have changed since then, but it was a big help. Part of the problem is the way my theme interacts with WordPress itself. Even something that should be very easy, like uploading my banner, took at least an hour and a half, because there are 4 or more places where the settings for “Heading” go, and they all seem to cancel each other out. And then at the end of it, the banner that had fit perfectly before now does not, and had to be shrunk down. That’s just one example. Makes no sense.
Oh, I can imagine that loosing all the style features would be awful. Aparently you were able to restore some of it. Did it come together with a feature update? I could imagine that if, for example, you had widgets in some side-bar that is no longer included in an updated style, it would be moved to the inactive widgets window right at the bottom of the “widgets” menu on the Dashboard. – Or something like that…
Could it, alternatively, be a trial to convince you that you are hiring to few bandwidth from your provider?
In any case, I am sorry to hear read that you have to bother with that sort of thing! Caring for the look and order of websites always feels like the worst time sink, at least to me. I hope you’ll not let pass a bit of precious studio time in favour of this. While it is important, and we all love your writing and your blog, it seems more important for you to find some playtime.
I know I am late (again) but I’ll take a drink, too, if there is anything left.
Dearest Hilke… Late? Late is personally my only mode of functioning. You could comment a month or more “late” and I’d always be happy to hear from you. Speaking of late, I wasn’t, alas, able to return to the post office until the end of last week (I think it was–it all blurs together at this point…). Your stamp-themed package is finally on the way to you. I’m sorry it took so long.
As for the site, it should all be repaired now. I had to refresh my browser to see the fixes, so I’m hoping they actually are visible to the rest of you as well. I normally wouldn’t mind messing with blog design. But the combination of WordPress with this particular theme (I suspect) makes it truly a test of one’s sanity. The simplest things that should only take a minute turn into Kafkaesque trials of an hour or more.
As for my provider… they claim I wasn’t hacked, but this happened immediately after a HUGE (biggest yet) jump in bandwidth traffic (which is so frustrating, considering that I have installed widgets galore that are supposed to help with that). Also, my host had previously sent out a message that they were performing “maintenance.” Perhaps there was a glitch with that… Whatever it was, it’s made me paranoid for the integrity of the blog. Next time, could it be the posts too?!
I guess this should be taken as a public service message to my fellow bloggers — make back-ups often! And make sure they are in a format you can actually use. (Yes… this was an issue with a back-up widget that turned out not to be as useful as I’d hoped. Alas.)
I hope you are somehow managing to get some studio time!