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      Friday, December 27, 2013


geekstuff
12:33 PM - 12/27/2013

The topic: About my blog problems.

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Last night, when we went to bed, I told Brian I was all done, all caught up. All of my old entries were back in place. I wouldn't be working for the next six months, reconstructing old entries.

It started with this post. Everytime I tried to submit it, I was redirected to the main journal page. I saved it to a text file, because it was long and I didn't want to lose it. I tried to post it paragraph by paragraph. But a little over halfway done, it wouldn't submit. Confused, my first thought was a problem with the third party software. I deleted it. And when I deleted it, everything in the database was overwritten. With nothing.

A little clarification. This weblog is run on PHP. There are different types of software engines out there. Javascript, java, flash, CGI, perl, just to name a few. Back in the late nineties, when I first started on the internet, anything done was hand coded with HTML. My blog entries from 1997 to the end of 2002, were all hand coded. I'd get them ready on my computer, then upload them to the internet. Then at the end of 2002, I found a free weblog script in my cPanel at my website host. The name of it was PMachine. I tried it and I like it. Then it was upgraded and fancified with new stuff and new codes and I upgraded with it. That was Expression Engine V.1. It was fun to play with because people made plugins, that you installed with this software and it added to what it could do. Back in 2009, a rewrite was done and that became Expression Engine V.2. I bought it, but never got around to installing it. Version 1 worked nicely. (When I started, new installs had to be done manually; I sure appreciated it when "wizards" came along that did all the hard stuff for you.)

Well, back in March I decided to do the install. And I did. And one of the things I did was to export the database (the tables were all of the information was kept - each part of the weblog had it's own line (channel) and each channel had its own ID; the title had a line, the category had a line, the weather had a line, the earworm had a line, the main entry had a line, the extended entry had a line, the comments had a line, each with their own individual ID number). I did the same thing last week when I tried to fix the weblog. You know, where that post wouldn't submit. My first thought was the problem was the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor. It was a third party install. It was the only thing I could figure was causing the problem. So, I uninstalled it.

And when I did that, everything in the database table for this channel, the data entry channel, ID 2, was overwritten. With nothing. Every. Single. Entry. In that table. Oh, all the titles were still there. All the categories were still there. All the comments were still there. The appetizers were there, the sides were there, the desserts were there, but the main entree? Gone. 

I contacted my webhost, hoping they had a backup of that database. They did, dated two days prior. Okay, that should work. After all, it was just the day before that I'd overwritten it. But, alas, somehow what they had was the same thing that had been overwritten. All those entries. Gone. Forever. Or so I thought.

I did a little checking and some websites archive  websites. Like the WayBack Machine. Google also saves websites (called a cache). If you search for something on Google, under the main link for what you're searching for, there's a tiny arrow next to the URL. Click on that and you'll have a choice of "cache" or "share". So, I figured I can save the entries, it's just going to take some time to do. 

I went ahead and set up a new field for the entries and started posting again.

I'd resigned myself to what needed to be done.

I had gone over to the Expression Engine forums, hoping someone could help, but, alas, no one could. The best advice I got was to put in a support ticket. But EE support cost money. It's not something I could justify spending, when money is so tight and I told them that. Well, I was told, sign up and you get a three month free trial for support. Yeah, okay. I signed up for it, but never put in a ticket. After all, the information was gone. Support wouldn't be able to get it back, it was gone. Forever, right?

Well, on Tuesday, the day when I was catching up on paperwork and posted this in the evening, the same darned thing happened that had happened the previous week. Okay, now I had a recurring problem. Now I could try to narrow down what was causing this behavior. 

Comparing the two files, the one commonality was the word "xanax". I went into edit and tried posting the entry with the word. Wouldn't submit. I removed the word. Submitted. I changed the word to x@ nax. It posted. Somewhere, something was choking on that word.

Since I'd downloaded my complete journal directory to my computer last week (my journal stuff has it's own directory here, upgrades, photos, etc) I thought maybe doing a search of the directory for that word would help me get to the root of the problem. The search did not, but it did turn up something interesting. When I upgraded the site last March, I'd downloaded a copy of the current SQL database! So, all of my work would be in there. Sure, I'd be missing some months in the middle, but I should be able to reconstruct those between the Way Back Machine and caches pages in Google. 

But how to get the old data (with an ID of 2) to merge with the new data (with an ID of 35). I'm not familiar with PHP or databases. And the censoring? How to stop that? 

Now I had something to ask of EE support. And I did. On Christmas Eve. 

And yesterday, Robin answered me. I was advised that it was most likely doable to merge the old data with the new. Just send us a copy of the latest database table for the data entry channel (I'd already included a copy of that March file I'd found). As for the censoring, that wasn't Expression Engine, most likely something the webhost had done. Most likely a program by the name of mod_security. Contact them.

And I did. And support didn't quite believe that it would cause the problems I'd been having with that program, after all, it was there to protect me from hackers. If I really wanted it disabled, he'd disable it. I did. He did. And I could post xanax a bazillion times and it wouldn't kick it out. I could post levitra or viagra, too (they also were blocked, although cialis had no problem). And within hours, I'd gotten email from Robin that the merge was done, all I had to do was import it into the database. Drop the old, in with the new. I did. It worked. My weblog was intact up until March 2013.

Now to reconstruct. I started late yesterday afternoon and was done by ten last night. That included a couple of hours spent shopping at CostCo. It was a little stinky on some of the entries, unfortunately the archive wasn't complete. That's when I turned to Google. And Google was a little tricky. What I was doing was clicking on the permalink in a missing entry. I'd copy the URL of that page, and plug it into Google and do a search, then choose the cache from the little drop down menu. I'd view the source, copy the pertinent code, then paste it into that entry in my weblog (in the edit posts section). Sometimes I'd get a 404 page not found message. Then I'd search using the month link (if you go down to the calendar and click on a month, it will take you to a page with every entry made that month). And if that brought up another 404 message, I'd try it with the date of the missing entry (if you go down to that calendar and click on a day, every post made that day will show on one page). 

I got them all. Every single one. My weblog is back.

Yay! 


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lisaviolet is seventy something, married with no kids, takes care of lots of cats, likes taking photographs, loves Southern California weather and spends altogether too much time avoiding her responsibilities.

In her spare time, she makes pretty things to sell in her store.

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