So how do you like the new setup? Yeah, I know. It sucks. In case you’re wondering, about 10 days ago my website got a case of the WordPress flu and the bug eventually decimated my site so badly that I was forced to do a complete reinstall on Wednesday afternoon. As I write this, it is now almost 1 in the morning and I have been sitting at my computer for the past, oh, 10 hours or so trying to raise my poor old website from the dead. Right now I’d say it’s about as lively as the undead from Zombieland. Messed up dates, missing comments and other oddities still abound here, but I’m trying to rebuild it and restore it to its former, um, glory as fast as I can. If I was a WordPress expert I suppose I could have had everything fixed in about 30 minutes, but I’m not. Hey, if you want to have some fun today stop on by every hour or so and check up on my progress.
The good news is all of my posts survived.
The bottom line: Hopefully, you’ll be able to see Len Penzo dot Com slowly regenerate itself back to its old self by tomorrow night. Hopefully. Until then, enjoy this very lame temporary theme. We’ll return to our regularly scheduled irreverence as soon as possible.
(Editor’s Note: Yes, I realize this 100-word post is almost 200 words, but it’s late and I really don’t care!)
It looks better. I think many blogs should upgrade their themes and font for a better and clearer read.
You’re killing me, Doable… 😉
Don’t down yourself for not being an expert wordpresser yet. No need to respond to this post, you must be exhausted. We’re rooting for you.
I knew something was going on based on your feed. Dealing with technical problems can be frustrating, but I’m glad you didn’t lose any posts.
I found your site a few weeks ago and enjoy reading your posts so I added you to my blog roll. Yes, I was wondering why your most ‘recent’ update was 2 years ago according to the feed!! I figured there was something strange going on….
I thought I was blind or something when I tried to leave a comment the other day and was forbidden.
I am so sorry you have had to spend so much time on this. I have made some updates on my site, and what I think will take 10 minutes ends up sucking up 2 hours. I can’t imagine doing all you have had to do.
Good luck!
Len,
I wondered why my comments were disappearing. You are a pretty hard guy to offend, so I wasn’t sure what I had said. 🙂
I had the same thing happen to my blog about 6 months ago and it took weeks to clean up. Now, I always keep my WordPress and all of my plugins up to date.
Also, I believe you can backup your Atahualpa theme settings. I’m going to do that later today, since I have a lot of customizations in mine.
Hang in there.
Bret
“Until then, enjoy this very lame temporary theme.” LOL oh man, I feel your pain. i hope you’re making progress Len!
Thank you all for your encouragement! I’ve got Tom from Canadian Finance Blog providing me with some advice. He wants me to do ANOTHER reinstall, since I seemed to have screwed something up during my last recovery attempt. Being the stubborn engineer that I am, I really hate to use that option of last resort (for the third time) so I am still searching for a more palatable solution. LOL
Of course that will mean I’ll have to eventually pull the site down for awhile again. *sigh*
Man, this is a real drag… oh well, onward and upward! I can’t screw things up any worse than they already are.
Best of luck. I would dread re-working everything i’ve customized in Atahualpa.
Oooh…that sucks. I was having the same commenting problems – so the first thing I did was back-up everything!
Well, I did have back-ups. The problem was my lame WordPress restoring skills. Hey, I’m learning how to do things now though! (If only a little bit…) In the meantime, I hope this temporary new layout doesn’t turn you to stone; just don’t look at it too long…
Back to breaking rocks in the prison yard…
/insert promo/ This is why I installed Vaultpress a few months ago. I would recommend it to any serious blogger. /end promo/
That stinks man. I hope you’re able to recover everything soon. Nothing sucks more than wanting to write and having to deal with administrative/IT problems.
Hey Len, you need some wordpress viagra to stiffen up your site?
No I don’t have any but sounds like a money making venture…
Good luck, I would be calling Ben. Ben is my nephew, computer brainiac. He can fix anything with 0’s and 1’s…
I’ve heard about a blog virus now and then. Any idea how your site was infected? I shouldn’t admit this…but I don’t have a backup right now! I’ve been so damn lazy, gotta get on that.
@Wojo: Thanks for the tip, my friend. Where were you last month when I needed you? 😉
@Dr. Dean: ROTFLMAO! (and shaking my head to boot!). I needed that. Thank you. 🙂
@Darwin: Not sure, but it started in the comments and slowly propagated. It got to the point where the databases were so screwed up that I not only could no longer repair them, but I couldn’t even access the blog to fix it. My log files showed a lot of nefarious problems starting from the “Recent Comments” widget, so needless to say that won’t be making a return appearance here unfortunately.
Hi Len, I’m sorry to hear about your troubles. I had my blog hacked a few months ago. If you think it’s an attack, I’ve had good luck with the WordPress Firewall and Anti-Captcha plugins (the latter doesn’t involve bugging your users for a word or math problem).
Len,
Ugh…Sorry to hear about your troubles. The site looks good, if a little spartan, so don’t let it get you down. I hope you don’t spend the whole weekend, scheduled to include lots of glorious spring weather, inside slaving over a hot motherboard 🙂
Betty
Hi Len, I had the VERY SAME issue on my site back on March 30th. And I was on Atahualpa! It kept coming up as 500 Server Error, and nothing I tried fixed it. I changed the theme, deleted Atahualpa and tried to reload and start from scratch three times–nuthin’ doing. Updating didn’t matter either.
The problem seemed to be the theme itself. The one I have now is simpler and easier to work with, but it can’t be customized anywhere near as much. So…still searching for that perfect platform.
On the postive side though, my site was in desparate need of a change, and I totally impressed myself in that I was able to get the new theme up to speed in about six hours. For a certified non-tech guy like me, that was close to a miraculous event! Still, I hope that doesn’t ever happen again.
That stinks! I know the feeling of utter hopelessness when it comes to a computer/blog meltdown. At least all of your posts survived. Best of luck getting it back to it’s old blog-self.
Len, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.
Maybe a funnier guy, maybe a savvier guy, but not a nicer one.
(All said in jest my friend!)
I highly recommend the Thesis theme. You can split out your design changes etc in different files, and so many people use it that someone has usually done something you want to do.
Good luck!
Aw, sorry to hear that your blog has the flu. Get well soon Mr. Blog!
I do not know what your last blog looked like, but I cannot say that I do not like this layout. So many blogs have way too much going on…and frankly I find it a turn off. Even if the content is good, it just visually way too much for my eyes to see.
Sorry to see this, love your site and content. I’ve been getting some “questionable” comment action on my blog, very long and vague comments from a .pl domain, hoping they don’t become insidious. Keep pluggin’ away at it!