Adventures in living a healthy, juicy life
by Cheryl Ragsdale
Help! I Crashed My Site!
Sound familiar? We’ve all done it. I always reassure myself that it’s easy and I can manage on my own – everyone else seems able to do it.
I have the instructions right in front of me. Looks simple enough.
Except there’s always a step that I either miss or get completely wrong and then – GONE!
I’ve learned not to panic – too much. There’s always been a way to fix it. Usually that means, that whatever I’ve done wrong, other people have done wrong before me. All’s well that ends well.
This last time I did something stupid, my site was down over the weekend. Very disconcerting to anyone who visited. I hope I didn’t lose anyone. I’ve since learned that just because a site shows up with a 404 or a 500 error, it doesn’t mean that they’re gone forever. It just means something happened and their site has DISAPPEARED!
Whilst I waited for Nick, my site designer – who lives in Japan on the other side of the world from me – to respond to my request for help, I found this nifty site that lets you make movies using a special technology.
xtranormal.com directly from their about page:
“xtranormal’s mission is to bring movie-making to the people. Everyone watches movies and we believe everyone can make movies. Our revolutionary approach to movie-making builds on an almost universally held skill—typing. You type something; we turn it into a movie.”
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Here’s an example of a movie that only took a few minutes to make using xtranormal technology.
At first, I didn’t upload it to youtube, but now I have.
Before I uploaded, when I embedded the movie in this post, it showed up cloaked, forcing me to return to the site to watch the movie. It was my error, as the option to upload the video to youtube is clearly available after publishing is completed.
Making this movie was fun! It was very easy too. Obviously, the more I use this new tool, the better I’ll get at it.
Try it and see for yourself!
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Your Turn
What new tools have you been experimenting with? What are your experiences with making mistakes and accidentally shutting down your site? What do you think of my movie?
Please leave your comments in the comment box located on the right hand side of this post about half-way down the page.
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Cheryl Ragsdale practices martial arts for fun and physical fitness at Florian Martial Arts Center. She was recently promoted to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Blue Belt by Keith Florian and Kenny Florian, both Black Belts. Stand up for yourself and stay young from the inside out. Check out some of my other posts strictly for UFC fans and fighters.
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Twitter: JMPruitt75
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Great video. Glad to see you are getting things worked out. I have had my sites get errors so many times that I don’t even worry about it anymore.
Thats a great movie tool. thanks for sharing. gonna go play with it now, and see what I can come up with.
james@Online Blogging Guide´s Last Fabulous Post [type] ..My Birthday Reflections
I think it never fails that I mess something up with my WP installation. I always have to find my way into the database, locate the wp_options table, and remove the active plugins row so I can get back up and running. Other than that I’ve not done anything too terrible…YET!
Jason | Ebook Writer´s Last Fabulous Post [type] ..SEO Article Writing Service
Twitter: thatgirlisfunny
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Hi Jason,
At least you know what to do when things go wrong. I love wordpress because I can follow my tracks when I mess things up. Thanks for visiting today
Cheryl´s Last Fabulous Post [type] ..15 things we used to complain about before life got amazing
Twitter: barry_wells
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Hi Cheryl, last year i was on bed rest after a yet another operation (suprise!) and was working on my laptop when my email accounts started asking for my password. Very strange i thought and entered them only to be asked again. Problem!!
At the time I had 2 web server accounts and all of my sites from one of them had gone, talk about panic!!
I went to my web based email account and sent an email to my host company, it was returned. I went to my hosts website, it had gone as well. I’m now thinking that if they’ve gone how can i get my back up to reinstall on another server? To say panic was setting in is an understatement.
I went to eBay and all of my images had gone as well. 4 years work had vanished from my screen and the 24 hr back up system that the host guaranteed was useless as i couldn’t contact my host to retrieve it.
I posted a request for help on a forum that i’m a member of and had to wait for a reply.
That night was a sleepless one I can tell you. I was tossing and turning thinking over and over about the amount of work i had lost.
In the morning I checked my sites again, still not there and my heart sank. I’m not lying when i say that i was close to tears, I was numb Cheryl!
I checked on the forum and had a reply. The very very kind person had gone and checked my sites and informed me that they were all in place.
Puzzled i asked how he could see them and i was getting a page not found notice.
He replied and informed me it was obviously something techie’ and advised me to switch my system off, including modem, for at least 10 minutes. I left it halve an hour and re-booted it all.
Went over to my sites and they were all in place, it was something in the modem. which had been reset by being switched off.
The first thing i done was transfer all of my sites to one hosting company, as the one that played up was impossible to get hold off during the dilemma, and the 2nd company had lots of contact points.
I then went and got an external hard drive and spent the next day backing everything up.
Phew what a releaf.
Now as soon as something goes wrong i switch off & reboot, and it’s worked fine so far.
Catch up very soon Cheryl
Take care, Barry
Twitter: thatgirlisfunny
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Hi Barry,
I definitely empathize with your experience. I’m glad you found a simple solution. It always helps to have someone try to recreate the problem we’re having by taking a look at the situation through a different browser. At first, I didn’t understand how people could see something other than what I was seeing. I use firefox and safari as my browsers now. Plus, I use Hostgator. They are always available with answers to questions 24/7. A definite relief. Good to see you alive and kicking
Twitter: happymakernowco
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Love the movie. I shall have to try that out. Maybe I can get real clever with the happiness.
Good luck with site and I never have had mine crash, knock on wood, but I do have Andrew there if need be. Thank heaven.
Thanks for the info on the movie making.
Have a great day Cheryl
Debbie
Twitter: thatgirlisfunny
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Hi Debbie,
It was fun to make that little movie. I’m constantly amazed at the nifty new tools I find online. Great to hear from you! I’d love to see you try your hand at a happiness movie
Twitter: thublogger
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Hi Cheryl,
I had this experience back in mid-July and wow was I freaking out. However, the experience and the tools which helped me restored my site back to it’s original state was there, so I made good use of it. I even wrote about it too.
http://www.bloggingfor.info/how-to-restore-your-wordpress-site-in-less-than-1-hour/
Hopefully, for next time you’ll be prepared. How are things now?
BTW, the video was hilarious.
‘Oh, the ruby slippers’ LOL Thanks for introducing us to xtranormal technology. Will check it out.
Wishing you well!
Thu
Thu Nguyen@BloggingFor´s Last Fabulous Post [type] ..Biography Fridays- Michael Nobbs Keeping Art Sustainably Creative
I am about to do a full makeover on my blog and am SO nervous. I have to say, your blog looks great now whatever happened. Looking forward to checking out all the fun stuff you have here!
Charlene – Balance Beam´s Last Fabulous Post [type] ..Customer Delight
Twitter: thatgirlisfunny
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Hi Charlene,
All I can say is back-up your blog before you start. I followed that advice so I knew I was ok in the long run. But, waiting to see what I had messed up felt like an eternity while my site was down. I’m sure you’ll come through with flying colors and your blog will be even better than it is right now
I’ve had my share of panics and “what’s happening?!” on my blogs. On a couple occassions my backups were not too recent. I had to redo a few posts. Thankfully I always save drafts locally so I only had to edit some parts of it. Lesson learned for me. Always backup. Helps to be redundant than sorry.
Twitter: thatgirlisfunny
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Hi Julbilder,
Agreed on the backing up idea! I made sure that my site was backed up before I started making changes. When the screen went blank, my heart jumped out of my chest. Luckily, I was able to calm down again knowing that my site would come back to life again as soon as help arrived. What a relief to see everything back to normal – and fully upgraded