Also, a great big FUCK YOU to HostLatte, my now-former blog host company.
So, a few weeks ago I tried to get to this blog.
And couldn’t!
I tried to log in to this blog’s admin page.
And couldn’t!
Weirdly I could get to the blog if I used Safari’s incognito mode, or if I (God help me) used my work PC.
But still absolutely no fucking way could I log in (not on the Mac, not on Google Chrome, not incognito, nothing). I got a message “there has been a critical error on this website. please check your site admin email inbox for instructions.”
So I went to my hosting company, HostLatte and asked for their help. At various times I couldn’t get to the hosting company’s website, I couldn’t open a ticket, I couldn’t respond to existing tickets. All I wanted was to be able to get into CPanel as I felt that the answers I needed to fix that critical error message were in there.
I knew that my plan was to get into CPanel and then get the FUCK away from HostLatte immediately.
(Background: When I first started the laineyd.com domain, it was hosted through DreamHost. I liked them, they did right by me but they were a litttttle expensive considering this thing is a vanity project at best. When I heard about HostLatte’s super cheap prices I was excited because a host is a host right?)
(DumbASS)
(My husband calls this “file cabineting myself”, when I buy the cheapest option and then get all surprised when that option turns out to be terrible, after the time I bought a $20 file cabinet and was pleased to save $5 until I realized that the cabinet wouldn’t actually allow files to be hung in it without the purchase of a wire rack thing that not only I couldn’t figure out how to put together but also erased the $5 savings)
I talked with Gene about all of this, eventually. Blog technical issues are My Problem (which is fine) but I needed someone sane to listen to me. I was extremely concerned that I was going to have to scrap the whole thing and lose well over a decade of posts about my dogs and my jobs.
Anyway! I did some research on non terrible hosting companies and found my now-current host, KnownHost. I chatted with someone in sales there and explained my saga – I have a terrible host! I can’t get into the admin page for my blog! I can’t get my terrible host to HELP ME – and they were incredibly kind. At this point I knew that I was moving my blog to KnownHost and possibly ask Leslie in sales to marry me.
A few nights ago, I sat down, gave KnownHost some money. A day later, I sent in a support ticket “Ready to migrate!” and within 24 hours the good people of KnownHost had everything moved.
Alas, I couldn’t get into the admin page still. But I did a tiny bit of nosing around and found where I needed to go to upgrade the version of WordPress being used. And then presto, I’m good. That is all it was. And HostLatte didn’t have a page like this where I just clicked a couple times and then solved.
And I’m BACK, baby!