Foggy Bloggy Breakdown

On November 22, I tried to use a plugin for automatically updating my WordPress version. It crashed. I couldn’t log in. I had done backups but to no avail. I tried everything short of starting over.

Guess what – I’m starting over aaaalll over again.

So I thought I’d write some tips and advice on how to avoid what I went through!

Step 1: Make sure your site and/or blog is hosted by a company that provides you with cPanel and Fantastico Deluxe. I happen to use www.hostgator.com for my hosting needs. But there are plenty of other good hosting companies that also offer these features. Just make sure YOURS does.

Step 2: Re-read step 1.

With cPanel and Fantastico Deluxe, you can:

1. Install WordPress either as an add-on to your existing site, or as a stand-alone site, with pretty much one click.
2. Back up (and restore) your WordPress database.
3. UPGRADE your version of WordPress without all the techie hassles or even needing a plugin.
4. Re-read #3.

After I had desperately tried everything, and finally had to resort to a totally new WordPress install, I discovered that Fantastico Deluxe now offers the WordPress update feature. If I had known that, I could have easily avoided HOURS of panic and mind-bending hassle. Not to mention time I’ll have to spend now re-adding prior posts.

Step 3: After installing WordPress, use your cPanel to back up your database before you do anything else!

Step 4: Continue to do regular backups.

More tips:

If you find yourself having to do a completely fresh install, go get the latest versions of your themes, plugins and widgets you might have used in the past. Might as well

It’s a good idea to save your posts by copy & paste into a word processing document or Notepad, and save them individually in case you ever have to restore a post.

(Re writing your posts in advance in, say, Word, I have found one problem. If you copy and paste your text from a Word doc into the WordPress Write Post window, like I am now, the paste includes all sorts of horrible formatting stuff carried over from Word. So I generally write my posts directly in WordPress. You can always just keep it as a draft until you’re done. )

If the worst case scenario happens and you do have to start all over, look at it this way – you now have a chance to make your blog even better I’m using this “forced opportunity” to add a couple of plugins and redesign the layout of my blog to make it a bit more user-friendly.

A blog is a terrible thing to waste – but may you never need to know what I’ve just written