Well, it's been an awful week as it goes in the WordPress world. It also didn't bode well for having a happy wife either.
Monika's wordpress blog went down just after I had upgraded to version 2.3. She was not a happy camper. The initial error message that I received was "
"ERROR: WordPress requires Cookies but your browser does not support them or they are blocked."
After that I contacted my web-hosting company and submitted a "support "ticket", well after 13 hours of not hearing anything from them I finally went online and entered into a chat with one of the support techs. The chat support version of their support group is in the Ukraine. He really couldn't help much and he said I should wait for the ticket to be processed.
The next morning I decided to call my web-hosting company and talk directly with a tech. He was able to make some changes to my sql-database and all looked ok until I started to work on Monika's blog. Yikes another problem.
I returned the call to the web-host and got another tech with the same first name and he told me the previous tech had changed a prefix in the database and that now has Monika's blog really screwed up. Tech says wait for ticket.
URGGHH I am fuming now and still no resolve. Monika is now at wit's end and I am bearing the brunt of it.
So, now I finally try and get a hold of Mark Flanders who I know is a WordPress guru who is knowledgeable with the files that make up WordPress like .php etc..
Mark stayed on the phone with me for about 3 1/2 hrs to say the least as we battled through the database by accessing my server through myphpadmin and mysqlserver. What a learning experience for me.
Mark was seeing double by the time it was time for him to grab lunch. He is 3 hours behind us.
Mark told me about his hosting company Blue Host, who he said was great with Tech Support. I decided what the heck, I'll give them a call, I haven't anything to lose.
I reached Alex at Blue Host and he was extremely polite and helpful as I told him I was not a customer of Blue Host, he spent about 15 minutes helping. He created a new user in my database and it looked like all was good. I hung up the phone.
Then I realized I couldn't access the admin panel, then I thought about it for a second and then I was able to get in by typing wp-admin after Monika's URL and then I received another error message.
This one stated: http://monikamcgillicuddy.com/wordpress/wp-dmin/install.php this message wanted me to reinstall the WordPress software. I said what have I got to lose again? I reinstalled and then I received this error: The page isn't redirecting properly Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete.
* This problem can sometimes be caused by disabling or refusing to accept cookies."
I called Blue Host again and tried to get Alex back but no luck and after a little while I tried again with no luck.
So, on the phone to Mark again, we worked for another couple of hours and Mark had to go home and take care of his family. Monika's site was still down and not functioning. I felt bad for Mark but at least he was showing off his talent. He is one smart cookie.
I called my web host company and again NO HELP!! I got pissed and sent in another ticket and when I called to complain, all they told me was that every time I submitted a ticket it went to the bottom. They did tell me that an administrator was working on it. Ya Right. A few days earlier I asked for a backup of my data prior to September 27th and after 5 days they said it was empty. I did keep my own backup and it was on my hard drive and on the server. They just didn't know how to work with it.
I did a ton of research on WordPress.org and even posted a couple of questions on the support forums and received no answers.
Monika said Maureen McCabe said I should read Jay Thompson's blog and suggested I contact him to see if he could help. Jay suggested I contact Dave Smith at the Real Estate Blog Lab , I did and he was very helpful but he was a little over my head and Mark always said he didn't like to delete files so Dave had suggested maybe at last resort to delete a couple of folders and reinstall WP 2.2 version after I get my web-host to re-install my back-up. I just didn't have enough faith in my web-host.
So now I decided to call Blue Host one more time before I take on Dave's plan of action. I am caller number 13 and within 10 minutes I am connected to a Kevin who said Alex was not in and he said he was very familiar with WordPress and would help. I was on the phone with him all of 5 minutes at the most.
What Kevin did was redirect my WordPress and Blog URL address in the options panel in the Admin section of Monika's WordPress.org blog.
See it all started when Monika said that we should have our Blogs redirect from http://www.monikamcgillicuddy.com/wordpress to http://monikamcgillicuddy.com/wordpress.
I called our web-hosting company and they did a re-direct in the .htaccess file on their server for our blog about a week before we upgraded. See at least I did what I was told to do.
In reality I should have known to change those options in the photo above but I didn't and I really believe it was a nightmare from the get go and I believe there are a lot more issues to Version 2.3 out there than meets the eye. I would hold off for awhile if I were you.
I just want to say I really appreciate all the help I received from Mark Flanders, he is a true gentleman with a lot of knowledge and I am truly in his debt for all his efforts. He truly epitomizes what Active Rain is all about.
I will switch over to Blue Host and I will subscribe to Jay Thompson , the Phoenix Real Estate Guy and Dave Smith at the Real Estate Blog Labs and I will stick with WordPress, Lord knows I have a lot of time invested in it.
I already have Soundbite blog in my Feedreader
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