Talk About Busy!

Hi there!

The gang down at Green Home MegaStore and Sue and Craig Websites has been really busy the past few weeks! As you read in “New Websites“, they put up five new online stores at the beginning of the month. Now they’ve gone and done themselves one better – they just finished putting twelve (yes, that’s 12) websites online this past weekend.

Here’s the list:

• Dealing With Anxety Attacks
• Stress Management
• Spinal Cord
• Lose Those Extra Pounds
• Overcoming Allergies
• Staying Fit and Trim
• Cleanse and Detox Your Body
• Chiropractic Care
• Caring For The Elderly
• Down Syndrome
• Multiple Sclerosis
• Osteoporosis

Technically, these are all the same type of site – a dynamic php design with rotating home pages. From the reader’s point of view, they are all informational or content sites, and they all fall in the general “health” category. They were put up at this time (and there are a few more to follow) to complement “I Don’t Want To Get OLD!“, which has now been published.

You are invited to come by and take a look at all these sites – they represent a lot of hard work!

Ciao for now!

Craig

Jimmy Craig Websites

Tak About Busy!

Talk About Busy!

Hi there,

Well, we experienced a combination of things – some predictable, some not – that took our sites “Webmaster Resources and Information” (http://webmaster-resources.info), ”My Own Home Based Internet Business” (http://my-own-home-based-internet-business.webmaster-resources.info) along with the original version of “Green Home Mega Store” (http://greenhomemegastore.com) off line for almost a week.

As far as I can retrace what happened, it’s more or less the following:

• We host “Webmaster Resources” – a WordPress ver. 2.6.0. blog, “My Own Home Based Internet Business” – a php site, and the original version of “Green Home MegaStore” – also a WP ver. 2.6.1 blog on one of our hosts – DGNS – and we can’t complain about the hosting, the service has been good and we are receiving the first year’s hosting free as part of the benefits from joining a commercial membership website called All Teamed Up – ATU – the free hosting is again available, but there is also additional top-notch hosting for as little as US$ 1,49 per month for paid members.
• Our hosting provider relocated their server farm last weekend
• In the (potential) confusion, I ignored a “warning shot” from the websites that they were almost out of storage space – and then all heck broke loose!
• The account went over limit on storage (400 MB is a lot of space, but we busted the limit)! I didn’t believe it was possible, after all, we only had the three sites, and they were all-together a maximum of around 100 MB.
• Later, I simply was forced to believe it, because the websites went offline!

I still didn’t understand what happened until I went into the files with my ftp agent. Then, it slowly became clear what had transpired to chew up so much storage so fast.

• Remember, there were two WP blogs in the system, the Webmaster Resources blog and the original Green Home MegaStore blog. The GHMS blog was set up as a sub-domain of Webmaster Resources.
• Both WP blogs were set up to do full backups every week automatically (a nice little plug-in does all the work – set it and forget it).
• What I didn’t know or think about, is that the backup system on Webmaster Resources was not only backing up the Webmaster WP site, it was backing up everything there in the domain root directory, all the sub-domains included!
• Also, I had it set up to retain 14 backups – I thought that would be a little over two weeks’ worth, seven database partial backups plus one full backup weekly. Nope – that meant 14 database partial backups and 14 full backups! Woof!
• So, every week, I was adding one-third more material backed up by the Webmaster system! No wonder I ran out of storage!
• Look at it this way; the numbers in the table below are rough approximations, but even if they were off by 50%, I would still have been in trouble very soon, and the storage requirement would have stabilised at about 2,2 GB (!) :

.

• The real problems started when the capacity was overshot, many of the files in the WP files and elsewhere were erased. My backups were also in trouble. And the only one I had was from the second week of existence of the Webmaster blog – not much content at that time! I had not thought seriously about downloading backups, and at that time, I didn’t have the capacity to store them. Today, I do (bought a 1 TB external harddisk in February).
• My salvation was a system partial backup that DGNS has in their system as an automatic. It isn’t 100% complete, so I will still have to do some work to bring everything back to normal.

This gives me an opportunity to upgrade the blog to WP ver. 2.7.1, which I will do, and I will be all up-to-date within about a month.  But I will be busy!

The original Green Homes Mega Store site is gone – it is no longer necessary, since the new site is up and working well. The My Own Home Based Internet Business site will stay there – it remained essentially untouched through all this mayhem. 

There were bits and pieces of some other things there as well, and these are now gone, and the host account is cleaned up. My only concern is that the fantastico service seems to have been lost in the server farm relocation. That “one-click-installation” is a great feature!

Anyway…

Lessons to be learned here:

1. Always back up your files to your own harddisk (somewhere) in addition to the hosting service area – and remember, the WP automatic backups are stored in the same place where your files are! And do it on a schedule! Weekly is probably the most efficient factoring time against potential loss.
2. Make sure that if there is any “nesting” of WP sites, that the backup of the “highest” WP site excludes the lower blogs – that’s how to avoid the multiplier effect. The way to do that is to exclude the files from the sub-domains in the WP backup.
3. When it looks like you’re using up a lot of storage all of a sudden – look quick! Solve it before you hit a limit!

Ciao for now!

Craig

Jimmy Craig Websites

Hi there,

We just finished putting up a cute little blog for our client “La Porta di Todi” -  a new bed & breakfast in Todi, a town close to where we are in Italy. It’s based on a WordPress blog, but we needed to find a free hosting arrangement, and ended up with WordPressMU (for Multi-User), which makes a simple blog easier because there are fewer alternatives, but makes it more difficult for the blogger used to being able to use all the widgets and themes available.

We searched free hosting WP blog offers for almost half a day before we found this theme, since each WP-MU offer is selected by it’s “owner”, including the number and variety of themes and plugins. We played a few tricks and have the beginnings of a nice tri-lingual blog (Italian, French and English). It still needs content and some translations, but you can take a look at http://bandb-todi.com

I guess that’s all for now. See y’all later!

Bye

Jimmy Craig

Hi there,

We are pleased to announce (a little pre-maturely) that we have made a joint venture with Sue Fleckenstein of Ontario, Canada, to put together a series of websites and asociated goodies to make a commercial website called Green Home MegaStore, which you can find at http://GreenHomeMegaStore.com. Our joint venture effort is named Sue & Craig Websites – tricky, huh? (rev. 2009.02.18)

The main site will be the hub for a series of sites covering alternative energy, energy use efficiencies, gardening and associated activities, home cleansing in the form of purifiers of various types, automotive fuel efficiency practices, personal health and well-being, and other similar items. We currently have about 40% of the various websites on line in one form or another. The entire project is (obviously) not yet complete, and may continue to be a “work-in-progress” for years as we continue to discover new articles and practices that deserve your attention.

Technically, at this point, the hub site is a conventional hand-written html site with links off to the other websites. The hub site is a WordPress blog based on a very nice theme from Function Design & Development Studio, wefunction.com, on a basis that fits our purposes very well. (rev. 2009.02.18)  The other sites range from a brand new WordPress blog to static and dynamic AdSense-optimised php sites and html sites. At the moment, everything is a little helter-skelter as we are still getting our sites organised. We also envision that the entire site will become a membership site when it approaches “maturity.” For the moment, it is a free site with free membership required to comment on the blog.

We would like to invite you to visit the site(s) and put them on your favorites list.

That’s about all for now,

Craig Hesser
Jimmy Craig Websites

Hello!

We’ve recently put up two new websites under a new domain name and a new hosting company.

The first is named “Webmaster Resources and Information” and is posted at http://webmaster-resources.info. Technically, it is a blog and uses WordPress 2.6.2 blog software along with the “This Just In!” theme – the same as the one you’re looking at now. It is highly SEO-optimised for future “returns.” The subject of the website is just what the name says, and the first series of posts will be for people who want to write their first website and put it online. Future posts will address less basic information, but there will also be a thread for people new to posting blogs and how to do that.

The second new website is named “My Own Home Based Internet Business” and it is located at http://my-own-home-based-internet-business.webmaster-resources.info. The website is a static php information site containing about 30 pages. The subject is obvious from the name, and the Free Monthly Websites template has been tweaked somewhat to accommodate our prejudices and preferences. :-)

The hosting company is DGNS Solutions, and they’re associated with All Teamed Up. We received one year free hosting on this account as a membership bonus from ATU – apparently it was so popular that it “sold out” – it’s no longer available, but there is a plan with the same hosting organisation for less than US$ 1.50 per month for pro ATU members. 

We would appreciate you taking a look at the two new sites, and welcome your comments.

Also coming soon will be an online and offline shopping mall operated through Discount Home Shoppers Club, which we have just joined as a VIP member. We will keep you posted on exactly where to find the website as soon as we are that far along.

That’s all for now…

Ciao

Jimmy Craig