Oops!!!!
I can’t believe what I did the other day and didn’t even notice it right away–I deleted all of the comments from my blog. That’s what happens when you go without the Internet at your house for as long as I have been going. Big Opps indeed. Lucky for me, I have a backup and hope to have everything restored before too much longer. I can’t remember exactly how old my backup is. I guess that is what I get for not backing up often enough.
The other day, Adnan from blogtrepreneur pointed out that I had some unwanted pages on my blog. One of which included a password to his site. I was puzzled why it was on my site because I didn’t publish it. From what I could tell, my blog had decided to post every email that was sent through my contact form. I’m not sure why…I don’t remember seeing a setting for that. It wasn’t that way before I don’t some upgrades. Must have been the development version of K2 I was using or maybe a plugin. Don’t know. I just wanted it fixed quickly.
So, I decided to look through my comments and delete any thing that looked suspect. As I was attempting to look through them I thought I found a section on the admin area that listed them all. None of them looked like valid comments on actual posts that I wanted to keep. Boy was I wrong…but the delete all button had already been pressed and I was clueless to my mistake. Until I realized all of my old posts showed 0 comments!!! Next time, I will pay better attention and slow down.
If I had been paying more attention to my blog (which really isn’t my fault that I’m not b/c I don’t have Internet access at my house at the moment) I would remembered that I was actually in the spot where all the comments are stored and shouldn’t have selected delete all on that section.
So, there are some lessons to learn from my mistake.
- Don’t be in a hurry
- Pay attention to what your deleting
- Backup often
- Know what your blog is doing and why
I hope no one else runs into the same trouble I’m having. Again, I hope to have everything fixed ASAP which isn’t soon enough b/c I’ll have to do it at someone else’s house. Right now, I’m at my parents house and don’t need to stay on the Internet longer than I already have been. So, maybe next time I’m here, I can do some maintenance.
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LOL we all make mistakes Matt - and Im glad you didnt have to suffer for yours. Backups are a lifesaver really - for Blogtrepreneur I do a CRON job every night to backup just in case something goes skew.
Anyway got an idea when you might be getting your internet?
And thanks for the linkback - much appreciated.
Adnan
Yeah, mistakes happen.
we’ll see if I suffer or not. I’m not sure how up-to-date my backup is…I tried the CRON job thing every night, but it never works. I think there is a conflict between wordpress database backup and my webhost. Some security setting they have prevents it from working even when I do it manually. So I’m stuck dumping my own SQL into a file rather than using the simple backup button.
No problem for the linkback. Right now, it looks like it will be at least a month, probably two before I have Internet. I’m waiting till I find a new house where I can get broadband. Broadband isn’t an option where I live now…except Satelite which is too expensive. I could get dial-up but I don’t have a phone line.
I really miss it though!!! Did you ever track down the problem with your site???
I think I use a plugin for the CRON update, but off the top of my head I cant remember which one it is. Just Google it. Its so much easier having them emailed to one address - I dont see how I could restore a backup from the funny files though!
Doh! A whole 2 months is ages! Anyway good luck with finding the house and I suppose we’ll just have to talk through your comments. You could of course come over to the Blogtrepreneur Forum and I could make a restricted category for us?!
Lol yeah I did manage to fix the problem. I downgraded the Extended Live Archives plugin and it works perfectly now! It was probably just a WP conflict. Im glad its sorted though.
Anyway catch ya around,
Adnan
Hi Matt,
Hows it going?
I just wanted to tell you that Im going on holiday on Monday 18th, next Monday. Im going to Egypt with my family and cousins to get away from the cold English weather after a busy and hectic term.
I was wondering if you’d be able to cover for me whilst I was away. There’s not that many people I can trust at the moment with my blog and login. I would redirect comments from my Comments page to you and you could login with your password and moderate and respond to comments that I get.
I’ve also lined up a 2 part guest post. I’ll be back on 25th (I know travelling back on christmas day) but its OK because I don’t celebrate it anyway.
If you can’t do this don’t worry about it. Thanks,
Adnan
Hey man. Things are going great. I wish the same for you. Yeah, I don’t mind moderating your comments while I’m gone. I’ll do my best to watch them with my limited Internet access. I can check the comments when I first get to work and maybe right before I leave.
Hope you have a great time in Egypt.
Hey Matt,
Thanks a lot for doing that - there shouldn’t be that many comments to moderate. If you want, please feel free to write your own article - maybe something about entrepreneurs and Christmas?
Thanks and I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and a fantastic New Year for 2007. I hope next year will be the year when we can really build our internet empires!
WARNING: I’m commenting on my own post and this isn’t even a response to someone else’s comment
Well, I just wanted to let everyone that it’s taking me a lot longer to find the time to fix my comments. Also, my backup is a bit older than I thought. Hopefully, I’ll have a copy of some of the missing comments on my Gmail account and can use that to restore those. This is all quite depressing!
WARNING: I’m commenting on my own post and this isn’t even a response to someone else’s comment
- Lol - Unlucky about the backups, that must be annoying.
I forgot to say also that I’ve made you a moderator at the Blogtrepreneur Forums. Unfortunately I get a bit of SPAM in there, so in your morning moderate could you just delete the threads which are spamalicious
Thanks so much mate, really appreciate it.
Hey man,
I hope you had a great and safe trip to Egypt. I managed to do a fairly regular job of moderating your comments. I left a couple in the “awaiting moderation” status because I couldn’t determine if they were spam or a poor comment. I thought it would be best if you decided on those. I did delete the spam messages and I approved a few good comments. I did not moderate the Blogtrepreneur Forums. I mis-read your above comment when I orginally got it…I thought you said you made me a moderator on your blog (which didn’t make sense b/c I already had an account). I should have looked again and noticed that you said forum. Sorry about that. Hopefully, it didn’t cause any problems.
Catch you later,
Matt
Hi Matt.
Yeah Egypt was really good thanks and pretty hot too so I managed to do a bit of tanning before coming back to 0 degress here in UK lol.
Thanks for moderating those comments (I think I had fewer than I was expecting) and no problem about the forum moderation. To be honest Im thinking of shutting it down because no1 hardly ever posts there and it takes a bit of time to delete spam.
Anyway I hope you had a really great Christmas (as a husband) and I wish you a Happy New Year and a successful one for 2007.
Adnan
Thanks man. I hope you have a wonderfull new year as well. Glad to hear that Egypt was a blast.
I didn’t mind moderating the comments for you at all. You likely had fewer comments than you expected b/c everyone was so busy with Christmas. I don’t know what to tell you about hte forum….too bad it isn’t doing better. Maybe post a poll to see what your users think? If nothing else, this will bring awareness about your forum.