Web and Technology

I thought I lost my WordPress Database just now! Scary!

September 18, 2008 by Tricia

A few minutes ago as I finished the post below and pressed the Publish button this is what my admin area looked like:

Pretty scary, eh? I just about had a heart attack!

With the mantra “Oh no, oh no, oh no” going through my head, I opened up a new tab in my browser and loaded the site in the hopes that the blog would look normal. You know … that maybe what I saw in the admin area was just a temporary glitch?

No such luck … the front page of the blog looked like this:

Front page of my blog after publishing a post!

After having another heart attack and aging 10 years (gotta get some wrinkle cream now!) I decided to go to my webhost and check C-panel to make sure that my database really hadn’t disappeared.

The database was still there and I could see that it still had comment and post data in it, so i decided to open another new tab in order to load my blog again. I got the same error messages all over the page, so I added wp-admin to the url and I was able to go directly to the admin area.

Much to my relief the admin area looked fine when I got into it. I use a wp-cache for this blog so I went to the settings area and cleared the whole cache for the blog and it looked normal again.

I have no idea what happened, but it sure scared me! This is my oldest and biggest blog. The thought of losing the whole database and possibly the databases for my other blogs really freaked me out.

I just updated this blog to WP 2.6.2 on Saturday. Up until now there’s been no major problems except for the widget area looking strange on occasion. I wrote about that one one of my other blogs if you want to read about the widget problem. You can actually read about how fun it was to update 16 blogs in that post if you’re interested in hearing about my experiment with the WordPress Autoupdate plugin.

At least having just updated my blog I do have recent backups of the database and files.

So I don’t know if this was a problem caused by the new WP 2.6 or if perhaps there was an error on my hosts server when I was publishing my last post. I suppose it could also be a plugin conflict, but I haven’t added any new plugins or updated any since Saturday when I updated WordPress, and I’ve published several posts since then … so that doesn’t make sense as the cause of the problem.

I guess I’ll have to see what happens when I publish this post! Wish me luck!

Has anyone else had a problem like this immediately after publishing a new post? If you have experienced this type or error, did you ever find out what caused it? Any ideas?

Spinning my wheels these days

September 11, 2008 by Tricia

I’m so confused and disorganized these days and it’s just getting worse.

I have too much on my plate. Too many sites to manage and too many projects that I’m getting involved in. If I were making enough money I’d almost say that it’s time to hire someone to help me out, but that’s not an option at this point. Either that or quite everything to seriously consider one of those silly Jewelry sales manager jobs in Europe that I keep getting offered from job sites that I listed my resume on in the mid 90’s!

About a month ago I joined two membership sites that train you to market your websites and help you along the way. By this I mean they are set up with a variety of options to help you get traffic to your site as well as backlinks and even content. The sites are great, but most of their tutorial material is in video format and video’s don’t do well on my laptop – they keep cutting out. Not to mention that it’s difficult watching long videos when you have a puppy that constantly wants attention or a husband who wants to watch TV around. Plus, I find that if I’m given the choice of reading directions that would only take me five minutes to read or watching a 30 minute video I’d rather read a tutorial.

So I’m busy creating new blogging and website projects and trying to learn these two new systems at the same time and it’s just not working for me. I’m sure lack of sleep doesn’t help. I haven’t slept well in months so I’m living in a fog these days and if you’ve ever been seriously exhausted you probably know it’s very hard to learn something new or to get organized when you are practically brain dead.

I’m sure I’ll get my act together in the near future, but in the meantime I just feel like I’m spinning my wheels and not making much progress.

Win a trip to the World of Coke Museum in Atlanta with iCoke

September 10, 2008 by Tricia

If you are a Canadian resident and you enjoy drinking Coca Cola products I have a contest for you that might be right up your alley.

How would you like to Win a trip with iCoke.ca ? Ok, maybe you want to know what the prizes are first?

You could win a trip for four to Atlanta Georgia – where John Pemberton invented Coca-Cola in 1886. If you win your airfare to Atlanta will be paid for as well as 3 days, 4 nights hotel accommodation, plus 2-day Coke Museum passes for four and to top it all off you’ll also get $1000 US cash to spend as you please.

Secondary prizes that you could be eligible to win include Best Buy and Cineplex Odeon gift certificates.

The contest is in celebration of John Pemberton and his lasting invention! I honestly didn’t know that Coca-Cola was invented in 1886! I thought it was invented in the 1920’s. 122 years – isn’t that something?

Ok, so as I said you must be a Canadian resident to enter the contest. Plus, you’ll need to register at iCoke.ca in order to enter the contest.

The contest started August 31, 2008, and it ends at 11:59:00 a.m. EDT, October 31, 2008. During this time period you can enter up to five times a day if I read the rules correctly. So you can amass quite a few entries!

Of course you need to have 500 Coke coins per entry.

What are Coke coins? Well .. you earn them buy submitting the special alphanumeric pin code that you can find beneath the cap on 591 ml and 2L Coca Cola product bottles or on special promotional materials like iCoke contest cards. Usually each pin code is worth 500 coke coins, but for a limited time you can earn 1000 Coke coins on specially marked 591 ml Coca Cola product bottles. So when you’re out shopping watch for those specially marked 591 ml bottles as the pin numbers will be worth two contest entries if you choose to use them in that way!

I entered the contest last night and I plan on making more entries. Why not? I’ve never been to Atlanta and I think visiting the World of Coke Museum would be kind of cool.

Are you going to enter?

Looking for a new WP photoblog theme – help?

September 9, 2008 by Tricia

I need a new WordPress Theme for my photoblog – Breath of Life Photography.

You’d think it would be easy enough to find a nice theme for a photoblog considering that there are thousands and thousands of free WP themes out there … but no … there are very few that are suitable for displaying a large image in a single post.

The theme I’m using now is OK, but it incorporates the post page (single page view) into the main index page, so that cuts down on your options if you want to display certain things on your index page and other items (or exclude items) on single post pages. Also … there’s no sidebar. I guess I could live without a sidebar, but a theme with footer sidebars incorporated into it would be cool.

The current theme displays images up to 720 px in size. I’d like to find a theme that displays pictures that large or at least no less than 600 px wide.

Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions for a new WordPress theme? I’d prefer a free one if possible!

Thanks!

How many hours do you spend on the computer each day?

September 2, 2008 by Tricia

OMG I just realized that I’ve been sitting working on that new store and a couple of other projects for hours and hours! Holy Smokes … if I did that every day I’d have to start taking some of those special fat burners to burn away the calories that I’m not using when I’m just sitting at the computer!

Isn’t it amazing how much time one can waste on the computer? I mean, I don’t think I’m wasting my time, I’m doing some things and working on some projects that should earn me money in the future, but still .. it adds up! Just going through my email and answering a portion of it takes up at least three hours of my day! Arghh!

How much time do you spend on the computer each day or each week?

I thought I lost my WordPress Database just now! Scary!

Spinning my wheels these days

Win a trip to the World of Coke Museum in Atlanta with iCoke

Looking for a new WP photoblog theme – help?

How many hours do you spend on the computer each day?

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