If you visited this website in the past eleven days, you might have seen a disaster scene, a blank website, a ghost town. But I have good news. As you can see, I am back in business.
For eleven whole days, storiesofourboys.com was wiped off the face of the internet.
It started on January nineteenth. I woke up to error messages. I had no idea why. After twelve hours of trying to figure it out, I investigated my older wordpress.com version of Stories of Our Boys. Would you believe it? They said my bill was not paid for my domain.
Huh. Who knew?
I did pay the bill, but then I saw some odd activity on my bank account, and I reported it a couple of days before the website crashed. My thought was that for sure the bank will fix this little charge, and all will be well.
Ha! The bank fixed it all right. Turns out it was the fee for my website domain, and WordPress did not appreciate me taking their money away with a bank claim.
So WordPress snatched the old rug right out from under me.
Dear WordPress, a little note would have been nice. But I do see how this was also my fault. I should have investigated my bank claim further instead of jumping to conclusions.
The first day of the website crash, I was a miserable mess.
Then after that day of grief I was okay. I knew that if they wanted to help me, they could in fact help , and there would somehow be a way to fix this. Alan kept reminding me that if there were a crime, they would pull up my website like it was nothing.
I found that oddly reassuring.
While I was snug in my bed, not thinking about my website at all, a nice person from Bluehost Escalated Support team restored a back-up of my site.
When I awoke this morning, I opened my email, and there was a message from Bluehost letting me know I am back online. Hurray!!
I do believe this calls for a celebration. For quite a few days, I worried ten years of work was down the drain, never to be seen again.
Last night my son Daniel said if I get my website back up, we have to celebrate with a soda and a red velvet cake. I agreed to it, so I guess I owe everyone a little party!
There are a few glitches left, mostly in the form of image loading. I will have to work on that, but at least my website is back!
(And honestly I probably learned more than just this.)
3. Sometimes $19 can get you in a lot of trouble.
4. SSL means secure sockets layer.
5. DNS means domain name system. (It is a little embarrassing that I did not know that before, but I never sat down and thought about it! I never needed to.)
6. You can call up the company you purchased your domain name from to get help when your domain is pointing to the wrong place, and they will fix it for you. Many thanks to mine! Wild West Domains customer support was excellent.
I am only back up and running thanks to Bluehost. My computer has some back-up elements, but I do not even know where to upload them to. See? I need to go back to school.
All links to Bluehost on this page are now affiliate links because I now wholeheartedly believe in this company and endorse them. If you want to build a website, I do recommend Bluehost.
8. WordPress will swiftly punish you if you put a claim on their charge.
They do not play, nor do they send you a bill and give you an option to pay a different way to fix it as quickly as possible. I had no idea. It took many back and forths before they sent me a link to let me pay with a new method to reinstate my account.
9. WordPress uses automated computers to answer their email support. It worked only okay, so I’m just sharing this information.
10. Did I mention I am going to enroll in computer science 101? I have been building and maintaining my websites since 2013, and there is still too much I do not know that I would like to know.
Bluehost and I had several chats, knocking out one problem at a time. I am so thankful we did not give up.
This may be the first time in my life I was able to stay calm in any kind of crisis. It made a huge difference though. I was able to think more clearly and feel more like a grown-up. Each person I talked to at Bluehost and the domain place thanked me for my patience and kindness. It went a long way.
It reminds me of that time I prayed about the neighbor who I was avoiding, and God up and moved her across town! Prayer works, y’all. Prayer works.
Thank you for your patience while I get everything all fixed back up. This was embarrassing to go through. I kept thinking about all the people checking my website and thinking I had hung up my blogging hat.
I’m still here, y’all! Thank you for sticking with me! Sorry for the weird problems. I hope you can learn from my mistakes!
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I appreciate your commitment to sharing.
Yikes; what a way to learn a few lessons! I often feel a bit clueless about the programming end of things. 1/2 way through reading this I realized that it has been forever since I've backed up my blog and never with my new computer so I'm running that as we speak. Glad they got you back up and running!
Right? If only I could learn without going through trials. I'm glad I inspired a backup session. Good idea!