Main blog is down, temporarily

My ISP is having some issues, hope to have the situation resolved quickly.

Main blog down at the moment

When I tried to log in this morning, I discovered that the ISP is having database problems, and I couldn't get access to the WordPress Dashboard. The blog itself is also down, of course. HostGator tech support says they're working on it and hope to have everything restored soon.

URLs in motion

As posted over on the main blog, some URLs are being changed "right under your noses . . . right under your feet". (sorry)

If you have the static quotes site bookmarked, it's changed from "www.quotulatiousness.ca" to quotes.quotulatiousness.ca.

The main blog URL remains the same for now, but may be changing to something a bit shorter (eliminating the "bolditalic.com" portion), provided that I can successfully install a new version of MovableType at the new ISP. I'll post progress reports if/when that appears imminent.

Testing, yet again

Apparently a whole bunch of blogs were accidentally flagged as spam-blogs by Google's automatic scanning tools recently. This post is really just a sanity check to see whether the backup blog is still working correctly (Google sent a message to indicate what the problem had been and to apologize to those impacted by it . . . but as I don't normally post here unless there's a problem at the main blog, I don't know if I was one of the "lucky" bloggers or not).

Back in business at the new site

It's taken a bit longer than I'd hoped, but I think the DNS servers are now mostly updated with the new IP address for the site. You should be able to access the site at the old address now:

http://www.bolditalic.com/quotulatiousness/

Still a few CSS and directory path issues, but I think we're mostly back.

Definite progress

All the existing posts have been ported to the new ISP. Here's a temporary link to the site (it will go back to the usual URL soon): http://www.bolditalic.netfirms.com/quotulatiousness/.

Progress . . . I think

Jon may have solved the first of the blocking issues . . . the blog now appears to be loading and building the archive entries correctly. This is the first hurdle. Still a few more to go, but this is definitely progress.

He'll port over all the newer posts from the old site and then upgrade the MovableType blogging software to the next major release. If that works as expected, then he'll port it to the current version. Once that's done, we can update the DNS entry for the site and it should (within 24 hours) appear at the usual URL.

Status update: still hosed

As you may have seen, the main site is still broken: the index page appears, but none of the posts are visible, and the links to categories and archives no longer work. Jon is trying to fix it, but it may be easier just to move to the new ISP than to fix the current site . . . except that my archives are not playing nicely with the installed version of MovableType at the new ISP.

If worst comes to worst, I could just start over again at the new ISP and hope that the archives would eventually become available.

Main site down

Back to the backup site again . . . the main site just went down, and the immediate actions haven't brought it back up again. This appears to be another disk space problem, so Jon will let me know when he's been able to clear up enough space to allow normal service to resume.

Still not moved to new site . . .

. . . Jon is having trouble getting my archive of existing posts ported to the new site, and the account will expire some time this month. The text and graphics have been moved, and the import into MovableType appears to work, but when he tries to actually build the site, nothing is generated.

Even when he resolves that issue, it's only part one of three: the resulting site then needs to be migrated to the next version of MovableType, which then needs to be migrated to the current version (there's no direct short-cut between version 2.66 and 4.2).

So, in short, at some point in the next ten days, the main site may go dark.

Main site in quiet mode for the weekend

Jon, my virtual landlord, is doing another maintenance run on the main blog, involving moving the existing posts from MovableType 2.6 to the most recent version (by way of at least one intermediate version). This is necessary because the database schema changed substantially in the 3.x releases, so we can't just export directly from 2.6 and import into 4.x. According to Six Apart's tech support pages, we need to export from 2.6, import that file into 3.x, then re-export from 3.x and import again into 4.2.

As you can probably imagine, it'll be easier on Jon if I don't mess around with the existing files while he's doing this. Hopefully, if all goes smoothly, I'll be working on new posts early next week in MT 4.2.

Move to new site still pending

Jon, my virtual landlord, has the new site set up, but there are issues with importing the existing blog posts to the new version of MovableType. The entries import, very slowly, but when they're compiled, the resulting site is empty. This isn't a super-high priority for him, as the existing site will remain online until sometime in April.

If worst comes to worst, I'll just start creating new blog entries at the new site and keep a static representation of the old site somewhere (it will mean that the older posts will be much less accessible, but they'll still be there).

Just checking

The main blog may be unstable for a bit, as Jon (my virtual landlord) is upgrading the blogging software and there may be some issues with porting the archives over to the new blog. If so, I'll post here until the issues at the main blog are sorted out.

Back in business at the main site

Jon managed to fix the database problem underlying the outage at Quotulatiousness, so I'm switching back there until the next time I need to use the backup here (it has been handy to have an alternate venue, I must admit).

Still no improvement at the main blog

All the MovableType interface can tell me is that [This post no longer exists] for each and every post I've ever made there. This is not a hopeful sign that things can be easily rectified.

Er, ooops?

While trying to post something earlier this evening, over on the main blog, I hit a snag: it looks like the ID numbers contain at least one duplicate, which means I can't post anything until we can resolve the issue.

I hope to be back online at the main site soon, but I may have lost a lot of recent posts (currently, the Movable Type interface says I've never posted anything on the blog . . . which doesn't augur well).

Template issues on main blog

Yes, I know . . . you can't read the main blog when you try to view it in IE or Opera (and possibly other browsers). I don't know what happened: I made a change to one of the archive templates, but it should not have had any influence on the main page of the blog. I don't know how to fix it yet, because I don't know why it broke in the first place.

Service restored at main site

Jon just sent me an email that we're live again back at Quotulatiousness. I hope that I won't need to use this backup too often, although it's been handy to have somewhere to post items while the main blog has been offline.

Still all quiet back at the ranch

No change to the status over at bolditalic.com, we're still offline with no official prognosis for return to normal.

Main site still down

No change over at the main site yet. I'll keep you posted as I find out myself.