Five days ago, I began having extremely bad problems with my hosting account, which was box 350 (server). I feel sorry for the poor souls on that box. As described in my previous post, I started getting cpu quota exceeded errors 20-30 times per day. I called my host over 70 times this week, and that song they play when you’re on hold will cause me to explode in a frenetic rage of blackened anger – I heard it for hours.

Back up Nightmare

I have a ton of back ups, but they are all corrupted. It may take a few posts to explain in full detail exactly what the problem was, but my back ups didn’t work. It’s a terrible feeling to know you cannot produce a good back up from your site.

Every time I got on the phone with them, it was someone different. None of these people collaborate with one another, so every person you talk to is just hearing about your problems for the first time. I have a sore throat from explaining the same thing over and over and over.

I got the same fuc#ing answer every time I talked to them, “You need to tweak your scripts, and add appropriate indexes to your mysql database. It’s your fault, not ours.”

I did a reverse dns lookup for my site and there were 160 sites on my server, sharing the same IP. When my site got a exceeded quota error, all of the sites on the same server did too. They told me it was coincidence! This is what I told them, “Admit it…it’s your fault, not mine. Say it…tell me how bad you suck. Say it…say the words I suck.”

Finally, one guy said, “I suck dude, sorry. We suck. You’re right, that server is screwed up, and I’ll have a level 3 tech watch it.”

I said, “Is he watching it now? I’D PREFER HE ACTUALLY FU*KING WORK ON IT!!! I DON’T CARE IF HE WATCHES IT!!!”

When it comes to back ups, you don’t know if it’ll work until you try to import it into another domain, not your same one. For example, you move to a new hosting company and your back up will not take. You have then lost your blog.

How I fixed It

My install had serious problems, as well as the server. They were both messed up. If you back up a screwed up installation of wordpress, you can only restore a screwed up installation. The easiest way to get around it is to go into your wordpress control panel under manage, export. Export your posts and comments and save it to your computer. If you want to import it, you go to manage, import, wordpress. You’ll notice you can only import a 2MB xml file. My back up was 9.8MB, too large to import. I’ll explain how to get around that in an upcoming post as most of the online tutorials didn’t work for me.

I asked blue host to migrate my account to another server and they refused, insisting it was my fault everything was screwed up. I had them completely wipe out my cpanel and give me a brand new account, as if I just signed up today. That actually moved my account to a new server with a fresh IP. That’s how you move to a new server!

I exported my posts and comments and imported them into a private wordpress.com site for safe keeping. I then imported my posts and comments through wordpress, not my cpanel restore, thus eliminating the possibility of a corrupted back up – into my fresh self hosted wordpress install. If anyone ever needs help with this, I have now been through all the misery, so I learned how to do all kinds of new things.

Don’t Use Fantastico

The worst way to install wordpress is using Fantastico, which nearly every host uses. It’s easy to use, but your install will always be out of date and have security issues. You can install wordpress from scratch or you can use Simple Scripts in your cpanel. Simple Scripts works great and nearly all cpanels have it  – it also allows for fast upgrading. If I had to guess, it was the fact my original install was through Fantastico that caused my backups to be corrupted. As you upgrade to new versions of wordpress, you may have corrupted backups…so don’t use it.

Now, I have a fresh, beautiful installation and no server issues. It only took an hour for my DNS to propogate, but it’s probably not Internet wide yet.

I apologize to all my readers for my site being down all day, but it’s up and running wonderfully. I lost my last post and comments. I also lost my image gallery, so I will be editing my pictures back in over the next week (I will back it up separately and so should you…just in case). It’s been a blogger’s worst nightmare, but I did learn a lot.

I currently have one plug in, the Akismet spam filter. I’m almost afraid to add a second. The more you learn about web design, you learn that less is better. Anyway, I’m happy to be back on a new server that actually works. Oh yeah, I just checked several sites on my old server and got a CPU Quota Exceeded error…hahahahahahaha!!!!!! I feel so sorry for them.

Thanks To Michelle Gartner and Richard Catto for offering to help me!