Back in the Saddle
After EIGHT long days, I’m pleased to report that [chrisbrogan.com] is back up and running. It’s a long story as to what went wrong. At first, I blamed my original hosting provider, because they upgraded their servers, their software, and several pieces in between, but after some help, it looks more like I had a runaway plugin or some other corruption that crushed my site.
Thanks
Special thanks to Andy Quayle of TechBurgh for being a first responder, and for giving me a hosting spot within moments. I didn’t end up using it, but Andy, who is amongst other things a first responder for medical situations, was a first responder here, too.
Around this same time, KEITH Casey from Casey Software and Why Go Solo made a little holding file for all my front end blog files. Thank you so much for that, Keith!
Thanks to Aaron Brazell of Technosailor for taking apart my website, piece by piece, digging in deep to the SQL, and finding the problem. Without Aaron, I would’ve continued fighting my former hosting provider instead of finding the problem. Aaron also offered my site a home, and I’m grateful for that.
Finally, thanks to Justin and Eric Rasmussen of GimpTV. The two of them worked their heads off and set me up with new hosting, walked me through the parts of shifting my domain around that I didn’t understand, and performed HOURS of free labor (well, they haven’t submitted a bill yet) to help me get all settled into my new place. I met these guys, and their other partner, Michael Murray, two years ago at the PME, and even then, I suspected they were decent people. Turns out they’ve helped me many times over the years, in many odd ways, delivering key help at exactly the right time.
Without Andy, Aaron, Justin, and Eric, I’d still be stuffed up on Tumblr and there’d be no website. By the way, TWO different opportunities were almost blown by my not having my good site up and running, which has sold me once and for all on the value of a good design with lots of readily accessible contact info.
Thank you, everyone. As with most things in my life, a community effort saved the day.
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Comments
Welcome back online Chris, you’ve been missed, even tho I’ve followed you on Twitter.
The new site looks great BTW, enjoy the weekend…
I’m glad I could help, really it was quite selfish, I enjoy reading your blogs and it really messed me up in Google Reader by not seeing three to four posts a day. Glad to see you doing what you’re great at, creating a community and interacting with it. Best of luck.
Thanks for the nod and no problem at all. Glad to be of service.
I was following the SXSW coverage with a bit of jealousy and finally saw something I could do! Woohoo!
Glad to have your blog back. At first I thought my feed reader was broken, and then there just seemed to be a big whole were your feed used to be.
This is an excellent lesson for all of us; it doesn’t really matter about the technology you have behind you, it’s the people you have around you that really matter. You have worked hard to build that community, and when you needed them, they were here to help with your technical problem.
Welcome back.
Chris
This is a great post. There are great people out there, especially here in DC. I told you about this I had written just before I read your post.
http://preview.tinyurl.com/2acxbc
This is what it is all about.
I followed your post up with this
http://tinyurl.com/2cxnoz
Great work as always
Great news! We’ve all been out of our routine without your blog. What a series of bad breaks. Glad it’s all in the past now! Many lessons learned.
All the more important to perform backups before installing new plugins I guess. http://thepaisano.wordpress.com/2008/01/11/automatic-blog-backups-for-free works good for me.
Anyway, great to have ya back!
Pai