Firstly, I have several apologies to make. Let me make them straight up and then I’ll explain what has happened here on T2T in the past few days.
To everyone who received multiple trackbacks: Because I have had to reconstruct this blog from scratch, I suspect you have all received the same trackbacks from old posts. I am so sorry about this and I promise I am not trying to spam. I just wasn’t sure how to not send them when I re-posted each lost article.
To people who had written comments: I am going to try and put the comments that I have got backed up back into the database, but for anyone who commented and now the comment is gone, I am sorry. Because of the month’s worth of lost data, I am trying to retrieve what I can from Google cache and I suspect some of the comments will have vanished.
To anyone who has arrived at this blog in the past three days and wondered what on earth was going on: I have been working like mad to try and repair it which accounts for the odd posts, dates and appearance. I did as much as I could in the wee small hours of the morning to try and keep disruption to a minimum, but it was a pretty major task.
So, what happened?
Monday 31st March
10:07am: I finish reading Neville Hobson’s experience of Wordpress 2.5 and think “well, if it works for jangles, it’s got to work for me”
10:08am: I send a tweet asking for any last minute advice before I upgrade, then head over to the innocuous sounding Three Step Upgrade at Wordpress.org. Three steps? This should be simple
10:10am: I take a backup of my database but I fail to check the backup…
10:15am: Start of the upgrade process. Click the button which says Upgrade which is supposed to upgrade the database…and wait…and wait…then nothing. No instructions. It’s stopped loading. Just nothing.
10:20am: Thinking that perhaps it was done, I try to log into my control panel and…it fires me back to the upgrade page. So, I push the upgrade button and wait…and wait…then nothing again.
10:25am: After repeating the last step several times, rather than getting nothing, I receive a scary looking error message talking about duplicate entries and stuff. Head straight for the forums to see whether anyone can help.
10:35am: With no joy from the forums (seems I am the only person in the world to have had this problem on an upgrade to 2.5) and having gone through the same process about 10 times, all with the same result, I decide it would be best to go back to version 2.2.1 and load my database backup over the top of the now half upgraded database.
10:45am: Backup uploaded and version 2.2.1 reinstalled and…why is the latest post dated 28th February 2008? What happened to the 20 odd posts which I have put up since then? And why can’t I get to the dashboard at all?
10:46am: Panic.
10:48am: Call techy friend who isn’t there. Panic a bit more.
11:50am: Finally speak to techy friend who promised he would take a look…
Tuesday 1st April
5:30pm: Still no updated blog. Still don’t know what is happening.
10:00pm: Techy friend rings with the sad news that my mish-mash of version 2.2.1 and 2.5 as well as the fact that there is data missing from my backup means that my only real option is to scrap the lot and rebuild it again from scratch. He gives me advice on how I can retrieve the missing posts from Google cache, and instructs me how I can get into the database to adjust the dates so it doesn’t look like I have posted 50 odd posts on one day, and wishes me luck.
Wednesday 2nd April
2:30am: Still retrieving old posts, posting them back up, changing database details.
9:00am: After some sleep, I am back retrieving old posts, posting them back up, changing database details.
3:00pm: Finally finish retrieving old posts, posting them back up, changing database details. Now it is on to the comments.
The lessons learnt
Always check your backups.
Always check your backups.
Don’t believe it when the upgrade instructions tell you that it is only 3 easy steps.
Write each post in Word first and save a copy so as to alleviate panic.
Always check your backups.
Thank you to kateoo for the image
If you like this post, why not subscribe to our RSS Feed. Or you can visit our main website at Tiger Two or follow me on Twitter or Friendfeed
If you like this post, why not subscribe to our RSS Feed. Or you can visit our main website at Tiger Two or follow me on Twitter or Friendfeed
