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The Day I Lost My Wordpress Blog

By Angela Johnson

I've had a blog on Wordpress since April 2010. When I go into the admin area to work on the blog, I can see notices to update Wordpress or one of my plugins. I always click on the appropriate link and update automatically.

A couple of weeks ago, I had a notice to update to Wordpress 3.2., so I clicked on the button to update like I always do. Everything seemed fine, but when I later clicked on my blog's home page, all I saw was a message that said my blog under my cpanel user's name did not exist.

I went up to my address bar, created a new tab and keyed in my blog url and received the same message. I have two browsers installed on my computer; Safari and Firefox. So I went to my second browser, keyed in my blog url and still received the same message! I shut my computer down and restarted; same results. I tried my blog url with the extension 'wp-admin' but still the same message.

Fortunately, I have a backup plugin on my blog. I receive daily backup files by email. So I went to the most recent backup and followed directions I found online to restore your website. It didn't work. When I imported the file, the import came through fine and I received a message that it was complete, but my blog url still came up with the message that it didn't exist.

My blog was a personal blog about small town and rural life. I love taking photographs and driving around enjoying scenery, stopping to explore parks, restaurants, small museums, etc. I had 82 published posts with three photos per post, plus 14 pages of photographs that I told readers they could use for their own purposes.

I had monitized the blog somewhat with Amazon and other affiliate products. I even had a Paypal donation button hoping readers would donate a few dollars because of the photographs they could use. However, no one has donated and no one has bought anything.

I knew this blog wasn't the right type to bring in much money, but I loved doing it and showing off my photographs. You know that old saying, "do what you love and the money will follow?". Well, it didn't work for me even though I promoted the blog through Facebook, Twitter, used good tags, pinged the site, etc. My visitors were increasing and some had subscribed, but no one bought anything.

Even though losing my blog was almost a relief, I hated to lose all the blog posts I wrote. I didn't lose my photographs because I keep the originals on my hard drive and copies on thumb drives.

So for a couple of days I ignored the blog and caught up on reading my unread emails. I subscribe to a few internet marketing mailing lists and came across a recent one from Matt Wolfe who runs the Wordpress Classroom. His last post was about upgrading to Wordpress 3.2. Perfect Timing! He said to make sure you have at least PHP 5.2.4 and MySQL 5.0.

I went to my blog host's cpanel and saw that the PHP and MySQL wasn't upgraded, but I couldn't figure out how to upgrade them. So I went back to the email and read about a plugin he recommended called "Health Check". I added that plugin to another domain I had Wordpress Installed on but haven't started using. After installation, I received a message that said my blog was ready to upgrade to the new Wordpress version and I upgraded with no problem.

So I decided to try again to get my original blog back. I don't know how I did it, but somehow I brought up my old blog name and a screen popped up that asked if I wanted to install Wordpress. I clicked "install" and the blog came back to life. The only problem was that all it had was the blog title and theme. No posts and no pages.
So I went into cpanel again, imported the backup file and the blog was restored! But wait.... there's more.

I added a new post, but when I published it and clicked on the link to "view post", I received a "404 page not found" message from Hostgator, my blog host. I went back to my blog home page and even though it looked normal, not a single link worked except for external links on the side bar. When I checked a few of the internal links under the admin area, the link urls were there, but even when I updated the links, they still didn't work. I decided I accomplished enough that day by getting all my information back, so I shut down the computer for the day.

I always get my best ideas as I wake up in the morning. I guess I have good subconsious thoughts when I sleep. I decided since I was already half-relieved not to do this blog anymore, I'm just going to let it go.

I went into the Wordpress admin section and under the Privacy Settings, turned off the option that allows everyone to view the blog, including search engines. I didn't want everyone getting errors if they used keywords to find my posts.

I then removed all pages and categories from the home page so no one would click on them and find that the links don't work. I also removed the widgets for twitter and facebook, the subscribe and rss feed options, and deactivated all my plug ins.

I went to Qondio, Redgage, Twitter, Facebook and Squidoo and removed the blog's url from my profile. I changed my blog's home page to say that the blog has been discontinued and gave links to other online sites I write for.

My domain name for this blog expires 3/9/2012, but I've decided not to renew it and won't bring the blog back.

Moving forward, I'll use some of my posts to make new lenses (web pages) on Squidoo. I belong to Redgage (user name is Burntchestnut) and already have lots of my photographs posted there. I'll add more photos when I have time, and also add some of my blog posts because Redgage encourages duplicate content. Redgage does pay you a little for traffic on your content, but not much. But since it's easy to post content already created, I use it.

I've already been gathering lots of ideas and information on my computer for my second blog. I never had time to work on it because I was spending too much time on the first one. I'll be able to put out posts for the new blog quickly because I won't be doing so much research trying to find out more about what I've seen or photographed. The new blog posts will have more variety and the site will be easier to monitize.

I learned a lot with this first blog, but it's time to move on. I feel energized - like after having a rummage sale or cleaning out a closet. Out with the old and in with the new!

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Ron Kule, Author Jul 19, 2011 22:45

Thanks for sharing this traumatic experience. This is why I detest WordPress. By the way, if you change your mind, you could probably get most of your blog posts back from Google's cache (if you hurry) and archive.org even if it's impossible to retrieve anything from the database.

This is the first problem I've ever had with WordPress, even though it's a big one. My brother's been using it for years and when I told him my woes, he said he updated with no problem, but would make sure he always had a backup of his blog before he ever updated again.

I can still retrieve all the text on my posts when I go into the admin area of WordPress. Eventually, I'll remove everything as I make the posts into new articles elsewhere.

I just looked at archive.org. It looks like an interesting site.

I read your intel with interest as I am also a WordPress user, albeit the free version. This is the first negative thing I've heard about WP, and it's good to know what other people have gone through, and losing a blog would be devastating to say the least.
So thank you for sharing this with us, it's much appreciated. Going over to Squidoo now to check out your lenses!

I'm glad you like my intel. WordPress is a free blogging platform, but I don't use the free site because I'd like to make a little money with affiliate sales. I always back up everything, including my Squidoo lenses, Qondio, etc., because if you're using someone else's system, they can shut down at any time or ban you from their site.

I joined another site a while back, called Fortitude. That site shut down and I didn't get paid for most of what I wrote, but at least I had back ups of my articles. I wrote an intel on that experience, too.

Someday I'll have an intel on my great success (at something). In the meantime, I'll keep trying and learning. I'm not giving up.

You made a hard decision but one that was necessary. I have been thinking about closing down my websites because I am having such a hard time getting them to work right. I used to be able to do them with no problem. Good luck on your new blog.

Grandma Marilyn Jul 24, 2011 16:35

Thanks for sharing your issue with WP. I have to use it for all my sites even though I detested it at first. There are many backup plugins that make it easy to restore your site if something like this happens. I have lost many sites in the past due to bad hosting or the like and learned to always back up my stuff. I wish you the best and appreciate your share.

DrDons Jul 31, 2011 10:13

I love wordpress but the unfortunate side to running on their system is that things like this can happen. I finally moved my wordpress to a private site to avoid this kind of trouble and all of the restrictions. I am sorry for your loss as I am a writer for a living and losing any content is horrible, much less the content that is personal and sentimentally valued.

Actually, my site was hosted by HostGator, but I was using Wordpress to create and write the blog. It took me a long time to realize there is Wordpress.org and Wordpress.com and they are not the same. My problem was my HostGator's cpanel not being compatible with the newest Wordpress update, although I've updated many times before with no problem. Now that I know about the plugin "health check", you can be sure it'll be on my new blog, which I hope to get started on soon.

It is a nasty business losing so much. I hope that you can recover it. I lost a couple of lenses at Squidoo and was devastated and almost gave up. When we put so much time and effort into "creating," it's a blow of great magnitude to lose it. Onward and upward!

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