When I make a mistake, I am usually ready to admit it as
soon as I figure it out. So I’m going to admit a couple of big ones I’ve made
over the past couple of years, first of all because I might keep someone else
from doing the same thing, and second because I thought it would make a durn
good blog post topic.
Bye-bye domain names
The first thing I did was become indifferent to several
blogs I had set up. I wanted neither to continue updating the blogs, nor to
continue paying for the domain names. So as GoDaddy would e-mail me and tell me
the domain names were up for renewal, I would not renew them…
Without copying any of the dozens of posts I had accumulated throughout
my various domains to my desktop.
I even eventually did this with my biggest blog, the natural
health one that had over two hundred
articles on it. (I did so because I needed to start over with a new domain
name that family and friends didn’t know about, because I would occasionally
offend one of them with a strong opinion. And I was tired of hearing about
their disagreement/hurt feelings.)
Now, that wouldn’t have been so horrible if I hadn’t made
the second mistake. As long as I had my web host account, there would have been
a way to retrieve the articles from my c-panel. But then…
I cancelled my web host account.
When I get seriously stressed, I get depressed for a while.
Nothing major; I don’t eat overeat or quit eating or sleep for twelve hours a
day. The main thing that happens is I lose my sense of purpose. I also make
stupid decisions.
Just getting ready to make the huge lifestyle change that we
did a year ago was stressful, let alone the actual move. Besides, J and I were
going to be as “green” and frugal as possible and not have Internet service at
home.
Uh-huh. Right.
The straw that broke the camel’s back was that I had not
updated the Thesis theme, the theme I’d bought years ago to design my blogs,
and so it started having problems interfacing with Wordpress. We didn’t have
Internet at home, and at the time weren’t planning on having it. And between
adjusting to our new life, and the extreme frustration with trying to do anything using the library’s Wi-Fi,
which was slow on its best day, I didn’t want to bother with updating the
Thesis theme to see if that solved the problem.
I know, I could have simply reverted to one of Wordpress’
free themes for a while (or forever). But since I’d already let go the domain
name of my largest blog I didn’t want to tangle with any of that technical
stuff anymore.
So what did I do? I called my web host and cancelled the
service. Lost all those articles.
And that wasn’t the worst of it.
Drum roll, please.
I had a year of webhosting pre-paid, and they wouldn’t refund me the
money.
AND I STILL CANCELLED!
Here’s the really crazy thing: I could have, since I’d
already paid for it, just let my database sit there and wait for me to get
happy again.
Because now it’s less than a year since I cancelled, and I’m
happy again. If I had just let everything hang out in cyberspace, I could have
at least gotten into the database and figured out, along with tech support, how
to retrieve all my articles from all my blogs.
Do I regret it? Yes, but not as much as you might think. A
couple of the reasons for letting many of the articles go still stand as valid
in my mind. However, I would caution anyone who is ever tempted to walk away
from their websites: if you know you have good stuff posted there, at least
copy it all into a document first. Somewhere down the line, you might find a
good use for it.
