John Chow Visited My Site (Unfortunately)
Posted by Amateur BlogsWe’ve all waited for the day when a big name blogger visits our site. Yesterday morning it happened to me. I was checking the avatars in my footer and was shocked to see that John Chow had stopped by. I think he did this because he’d just written a post on InstantCoding. A snapshot of my site, along with a testimonial from me, is listed on their portfolio page because they’re the company that coded this site.
Now, I’d normally be really pleased that John (I think I can call him that) had paid me a visit, except, you see, a few minutes earlier I’d gotten the bright idea that I could troubleshoot a FeedFlare problem on my own. As a result of my amateur tinkering my sidebar had been shoved down to the bottom of the screen and was jumbled in with my footer.
So I started scrambling to “fix” the problem I’d caused. Since I’m not a coder you’d think I’d punt and call the guys that coded or designed the site. But nooo, I decided to hang in there and keep poking around. You know how guys sometimes get lost but won’t stop to ask for directions? That was me.
My next bright idea was to restore my Wordpress files from the last backup. Actually, that makes a lot of sense if you think about it, right? That’s not necessarily a stupid thing to do, is it? Well, who knew that the restore process would completely overwrite all of my latest posts and delete all of the associated comments!
Yes, that’s just what happened. I lost everything that was written since November 9th, which included my most popular post (with 34 comments) to date. I even lost the post I’d just published an hour earlier.
It was around that time that I noticed that the number of visitors to the site was increasing at a fairly fast rate. Huh? If I get 30 visitors a day I consider myself lucky. Well, turns out people were coming from John Chow’s site AND someone had just Stumbled my last post, which was missing of course, because the stupid restore process had just overwritten it.
Oh, and every apostrophe (‘) and quote (“) symbol in every post had been replaced by a question mark.
And to top things off, when I loaded the home page I got the following error:
“CANCELLED: YOU HAVE EXCEEDED YOUR CPU QUOTA”
Yes, that’s right. My site wouldn’t load. Only the above screen would display.
It was like that movie “The Perfect Storm.”
That’s when I really panicked (we’re talking heart racing and sweaty palms folks) and contacted Unique Blog Designs, the group that designed the site.
I also contacted Blue Host who checked the error logs and informed me that the Backup Wordpress plugin was causing the CPU cycle problem.
By then I was so freaked out that I had to take an anti-anxiety pill and lie down. I put the laptop in bed with me and every few seconds I’d hit the refresh button in StatCounter and groan at the number of people that kept visiting my broken site.
Fortunately, in less than 30 minutes Nate Whitehill had responded and started working on the problem. Bezman Stefan of InstantCoding joined in and soon got things straight.
But I was an absolute nervous wreck by then. I don’t think I could take another day like that.
Has anyone experienced something like this? How in the world did you cope? And is the restore process supposed to work like this?
John Chow Visited My Site (Unfortunately)…
Wouldn’t it be great if your site got visited by one of the “pro” bloggers? Don’t answer that question yet - it’s a trick question.
Yesterday morning my site was visited by John Chow. On the face of things that’s great, because he’s a popular…
Wow that’s rough. How many visitors did you end up losing?
Brian:
I’m not sure. From start to finish the site was probably messed up for about 4 hours. Understand, a lot of that time was spent “tinkering” on my part. And even after everything was fixed it took me 5 hours to go through each post and replace all of the question marks.
It was quite a day.
That’s why you should have a ’sandbox’ version of your site where I can test radical changes. You also need to have a good backup where you can quickly restore after a disaster.
Of course, problems always come up at the worst time. For example, OpTempo’s database crashed back in October while I was at work and I couldn’t take care of it until I got home.
Thanks Frank. As for automatic backups, I’m a little gun shy about them now. I definitely need to change the plugin I was using. The fact that it replaced my content really surprised me. It also took down the site according to Blue Host.
I know I’ve got to use something, preferably a plugin that backs up everything but lets you restore specific files.
That sucks man, I feel for you…I’d have been the same way, unable to do anything or even sleep at all until it was fixed.
And then probably feeling a bit embarrassed that someone “famous” stopped by and saw my mess.
But I’m sure if anyone understands this kind of thing, it’s John Chow. I’m sure he’s had the same screw-ups that we’ve all had
Thanks Mike. Yeah, you’re probably right about John Chow. He’s been in the Internet business for some time now and has probably had his own “oh no” moments!
Don’t get discouraged, it’s actually kind of a funny story. Thanks for sharing. Oh don’t worry, John Chow will be back. Your design is awesome by the way.
Oh… what a misfortune! It’s good to know that the blog was restored though. I never experienced this yet and I hope I never will. Anyway, thanks for reminding me to download some working backups today.
Emma: Thanks for the compliment on the design - UBD was great to work with. As for John Chow, you’re right, he returned! Last night I was looking at the avatars in my footer and was pleasantly surprised to see that he’d come back!
Jug: The only lasting effect is that the restoration process wiped out all of my comments - the posts from Nov. 11th - Nov. 25th now have no comments and 25 comments are gone from the Nov. 9th post. Murphy’s Law was alive and well!
I’ve just stumbled this post.
Being technically challenged, I’m extremely cautious when I try to fix anything on my blogs. Still some things are out of a blogger’s control. One of my blogs was affected by database issues right when I started promoting it more actively, and that was my web host’s fault. There was nothing I could do about it but wait. In the meantime that blog wasn’t visited by John Chow, but many other bloggers saw it and they must have thought that it looked too unprofessional. *sighs*
Karen:
Thanks for sharing your experience. When something like that happens, we really feel helpless.
Thanks so much for the Stumble!
Who the hell is John Chow and why is he important? You blogger types baffle me. So much unimportant drivel and yet you circulate it all as if your lives depend on it. Go outside and sit under a tree for a while!
Congrats. You’re my first heckler. Wonder why you didn’t include a valid email address or URL . . .
ACK!!! That is an awful feeling. I’m glad you got it all straightened out. What a hassle.
Heckler dude, wireless rocks! I love blogging while sitting under trees.
Great story. Good thing it didn’t happen today well with the front page of shoe’s blog posting.
Hi, I didn’t experience it personally, but an online friend who got dug for the first time and her host the same as yours cycled her to a Exceeded quota page.
I talked (chatted her through) copying her plugins to a sub folder (effectively de-activating them) except for wp-cache and the site came back online within a few minutes.
Glad it all worked out for you.
C
PS
Oh found you through your guest post with Shoe. . . nice article . . (your RSS is added BTW)
Chanya, I do it all the time.. just to mess with my techguys…
DaveN
Bloggrrl: Thanks! That’s a great response to heckler dude BTW. And I really like your site’s new design.
Hustle Strategy: You’re right. Can you imagine if it had happened today? I’d have grabbed the whiskey bottle for sure!
Carazariah: How interesting that it was the same host and your friend’s post had just been Dugg (just like mine had just been Stumbled). Thanks for sharing that story and thanks extra for subscribing!
DaveN: Wow. I could never do that deliberately - it was too nerve-wracking for me!
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[...] John Chow Visited My Site (Unfortunately) - We’ve all waited for the day when a big name blogger visits our site. Yesterday morning it happened to me. I was checking the avatars in my footer and was shocked to see that John Chow had stopped by. [...]
I feel your pain - I too have preteneded to be a coder and tried to tinker with my blog from time to time only to refresh and visit my blog to see it all messed up. I then scramble to try to reverse what I just did only to mess it up more. Hours later I usually end up back where I started making the entire process a complete waste of time. I am now going to only let professionals handle the coding and I’ll handle the content.
I also recieved my first CPU cycle problem this weekend too and felt the same feelings you descibed. Blue host was very helpful in helping me pinpoint the issue.
Thanks for the post - sorry it happened to you but glad to hear I am not alone
Chris
CHRIS: Glad to hear you were able to get the CPU problem resolved. Yes, BlueHost was a great help when I had a similar problem. There’s something to be said for being able to talk to a live person on the phone!
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