I got an IM from my father this morning stating that my blog had ceased to be. I checked for myself and it was true – all that anyone saw on my blog until roughly 12pm today was an empty white box. When I would try to log in to my account I was refused and told my name or password were incorrect. This was not good. I’ve been cataloging my life now for seven years, and I would hate for all of that information to go up in smoke.

I then remembered that I’d received an email some time ago from Hasweb (my host) that they were updating their PHP and MySQL software on the 8th. I forgot to back up my blog last night in the event that this update would screw with my website (which it obviously had).

The email from hasweb said that if the software you are running does not have an update to support PHP5 use you can do two things:

#1 put a text file in your root directory that tells all PHP scripts to be run on PHP4 instead of PHP5

and

#2 go into Cpanel and change your website administration to run all PHP through PHP4 instead of PHP5.

I did both -with no effect. I emailed the Hasweb support people and still hadn’t really received any constructive support by noon. At that point on my lunch break I casually mentioned the cool news that my blog was down to my friend in the IT department. He went to my website and said “what are you talking about, it is up…”

and so it is. Now the blog is back as if nothing ever happened. My password/account is back and (as you can see) I’m blogging again. I’ve emailed a follow-up email to Hasweb support asking if they did something in the last four hours or if my changes (listed above) finally took effect.

Now my goal is figure out how to start backing up this monster in case the last seven years of my life are ever really erased! Finding information on this is tough though as the blogging software I’m using “pmachine” turns out to be dead in the water and was replaced some time ago by the “expression engine.” I guess I should start figuring out how to migrate my blog to a new platform. Anybody have any advice on doing that?