You might have noticed that this blog has recently had a bit of a facelift. Well there’s a (not so) funny story behind the new look.
It all came about when I accidentally deleted my website.
Yep, you read that right – gone.
It all started with my WordPress theme…
I’ve written before about the problems I was having with a free theme that happened to have the same name as the premium one I was using. Due to some glitch in the coding, the free theme would periodically install its ugly self on my blog. Recently this had been happening more and more often.
Usually, the tech folks at my web host restore a backup and the problem is solved. But when the problem happened again over Easter, I found myself with a less than helpful techie on live chat.
Just about pulling my hair out with frustration and tiredness, as it was the wee hours of the morning, I decided to take the bull by the horns and delete the offending theme from my dashboard (naturally I switched it off first).
But when I hit that delete button, the whole website went with it.
For a moment, I froze. Then that slow feeling of panic started to rise. I couldn’t have possibly just deleted three and a half years of work – almost 700 posts.
Oh shit.
I turned to the unhelpful girl on the other end of my live chat, hoping she could somehow restore my website. But deep down I felt sure it was gone for good. I’ve heard stories before about people who have deleted their blogs and never managed to get them back.
I just knew I was going to be one of those people.
So I waited. I may have shed a couple of mildly overwrought tears, in between telling myself that it would be okay if I had lost the whole blog…I have enough Word drafts saved on my laptop. But that wouldn’t bring back the lovely comments and interactions, and the links that have slowly built up over the years.
As I continued to wait, I wondered if it was all worth it. Is blogging the best way to spend so many hours of spare time? I’m sure there are other things I could be doing.
I battled through the frustration of a slow and faintly inept live chat. Every time the techie on the other end replied ‘okay’ I wanted to yell: No, it’s not fucking okay.
But to her credit, she managed to restore the blog, although not quite in its entirety.
Instead of my regular WordPress theme, or even the sneaky imposter one, I was left with a strange amalgamation of the two, with a host of broken and incomplete blog posts. And that was as far as she would help me.
Another hour later, after hassling the support team for my web host on Twitter, I’d restored a further backup of the site but it was still broken.
So I decided to give up. I switched off the damaged theme, turned on the default and went to bed, resigned to spending my Easter weekend messing around trying to fix things.
But in the end it was surprisingly easy. I found a gorgeous new WordPress theme on Etsy, which turned out to be easy to install.
And I’m so happy with how it turned out. There’s still some tweaking to be done and 700 posts worth of images to resize, but the new look has given me the fresh blogging inspiration I needed. I’m just hoping that’s the last I see of that dodgy free theme…
CaptainKirt says
That’s a proper blogging horror story. I recently archived all the really old stuff in my blog but that leaves about 6 years of post that are vulnerable if something catastrophic happened.
I’m going to look for a backup solution. I’d hate to lose it all. It’s not literary gold but I would like to think someone in the future may like to read it.
Amy Lord says
It’s all the time and work that has gone into the content too, it would be awful to lose it. Although there was a moment when I thought mine had gone for good when I wondered if it wouldn’t be a bit freeing!
Natalie K. says
I’m glad this all has a happy ending and the new theme is gorgeous! There are a ton of good backup plugins out there and I HIGHLY recommend you use one of them. That way, all your posts will be saved just in case something bad happens. 🙂
Amy Lord says
Thanks Natalie, I do use the WordPress for Dropbox plugin and I have regular backups through my webhost, it’s just such a hassle to get everything back when there’s a lot of content! Hopefully it will be okay for a while now 🙂
Kristin | My Life as a Teacup says
I’m sorry this was such chaos, but the new site looks gorgeous regardless!
Amy Lord says
Thanks Kristin, it was a good outcome as I was ready for a new look but I’d been putting it off! Not that I would encourage anyone to delete their blog as motivation though…!