As many of you know, yarntomato.com has been offline since early January. There are a few reasons, one of which you know–I gave birth to our first son on December 14, 2005. The other two reasons–the main reasons, actually–are fanlistings and Blogger. I shall explain.
I host the wool fanlisting (currently offline, but back soon). Scripts for managing fanlistings are immensely helpful, but are often the target of hackers. I guess it must be fun, because once you find a security flaw, it’s easy to find tons of sites hosting fanlistings, which you can then have your way with. Hmph.
Anyhow, my site was hacked in November when a security hole was discovered in PHPFanBase, which I was using to maintain the wool fanlisting. I quickly recovered and switched to phpFanList. Unfortunately, a security bug was discovered in that script and my site was hacked again in January. With a new baby in the house, I barely had time to take down the stuff the hackers put on my site, much less repost my old content.
Contributing to the difficulty of regaining my site’s content was the fact that it’s been nearly impossible for me to publish to my site with Blogger since the beginning of December. The times I have published have been the result of excruciating workarounds or pure luck. In a nutshell, one day in early December Blogger kept hanging at 0% when I tried to publish. This happens about 95% of the time and has continued to this day.
I contacted my host and they don’t believe the problem is on their end because I can ftp to my site perfectly fine with my ftp program (which in agreement with what is written on this page of Blogger Help). Several possible solutions have been posted here and that’s the reason I’m posting today. I’m using the workaround posted by webprince: “What did work for me was to avoid entering any FTP username or password on the main ‘publishing’ settings page. Instead, wait until Blogger prompts to enter it after you click to publish.” I’m crossing my fingers it continues to work for me because Blogger absolutely will not respond to my question except with automated e-mails. Every time I receive one, I reply, hoping I will hit the magic number of replies before a human actually reads what I have written. I’m not holding my breath, though.
I know, I know, I could switch to WordPress or something like that. But that’s work (installation, maintenance, upgrading, etc.) and this is supposed to be fun. At least that’s what I thought in my blissful ignorance when I started blogging. I’m not quite as ignorant any more, but I’m going to try to go on blissfully anyway!
Oop! I almost forgot one last reason. Our high speed internet connection has seemed like 56K dialup lately. Gotta get ‘em to come out here and fix that.
At any rate, stay tuned because I will be back talking about what I’m here for… crochet!
21 responses so far ↓
1 deb // Feb 3, 2006 at 11:49 pm
as much as I loved seeing that little tomato when I clicked on your site link.. I love seeing a post from you even more.
GRRRRR… !!! those dirty rat hackers!
hugs to you and yours. may february treat you well. :-)
2 Rachel // Jan 30, 2006 at 11:16 pm
SO GOOD TO HEAR FROM YOU!!! Take care and enjoy little Miles. :-)
3 Luvtocraft // Jan 30, 2006 at 11:36 pm
Glad you’re back! It’s good to *see* you! :)
4 Julie // Jan 30, 2006 at 11:40 pm
Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey!!!! :)
5 amanda // Jan 31, 2006 at 12:06 am
Glad to know you’re still kickin’!! You had us worried!
6 kim // Jan 31, 2006 at 12:53 am
Hi Donna! It’s great to hear from you again — even if it’s about the evils of Blogger. (I’ll nudge you by saying that other than upgrading once, my WordPress blog never required maintenance or tinkering — it just worked like it should’ve, all the time.)
Kiss that kid of yours. :)
7 Kristina (yarncandy) // Jan 31, 2006 at 3:21 am
nice to have you back. I just wanted to tell you that if your hosting company has Fantastico, installing and upgradin WordPress is a breeze. Actually, even without Fantastico, WordPress is easy. And it has a imprort from blogger utility.
BTW- congrats on your beautiful son.
8 squishybear // Jan 31, 2006 at 3:50 am
It’s so nice to see you back!
9 Tiffany // Jan 31, 2006 at 5:20 am
Hey you!!! Good to see you! :)
10 Joy // Jan 31, 2006 at 4:38 pm
YAY! You’re back!
*grumble crummy hackers grumble*
I mean really, who attacks a website about crocheting goodness and babies for pete’s sake!?! :)
11 rebecca // Jan 31, 2006 at 4:53 pm
hey hey hey girlie! blah blah blah you lost me at scripts for managing… something something something LOL
really, i wish i understood all this mumbo computer jumbo… i need someone to send me an idiot’s guide or something :D
so, to what i know: how’s your man? i bet he’s grown so much! pictures, girl!
ps, glad you’re back ;)
12 Stacey // Jan 31, 2006 at 5:52 pm
Glad to see you posting! I was wondering what happened to your site but figured something had gone wrong and that you didn’t have the time to fix it.
I’ll second Kim by saying that after the initial WordPress install (very quick for the crochet blog since it was brand new, a little longer for another site where I had to import old Movable Type entries) I’ve only had to upgrade every few months and it takes about about 10 minutes each for my two sites. Really easy and hassle-free. But I will now get off my soapbox :->
13 Stacie // Feb 1, 2006 at 3:40 am
I’m glad to see that you are back. Why the heck would someone want to hack a crochet blog? That doesn’t make any sense to me.
14 Kathy Barber // Feb 1, 2006 at 11:29 pm
Glad to see you back. We can all toss rotten tomatoes at the hackers. I mean Crochet??? come on guys, if you’re going to hack, could you please go into my company’s database and give us a raise?
Kiss that little cherry tomato for me.
Kathy
15 Joann // Feb 3, 2006 at 2:42 am
Hi Donna, Congrats.. I am so glad you are back online. I love your site.
PS: you need to update your “about me” your a mom now too :)
16 deb // Feb 3, 2006 at 11:49 pm
as much as I loved seeing that little tomato when I clicked on your site link.. I love seeing a post from you even more.
GRRRRR… !!! those dirty rat hackers!
hugs to you and yours. may february treat you well. :-)
17 KathyMarie // Feb 4, 2006 at 6:03 pm
Good to see you’re back in action!
Stupid hackers. They must stand in the corner and get no cookies at snacktime!
Hooray for your return! I hope Miles is keeping well.
Cheers
18 Shelley (Pink House) // Feb 6, 2006 at 4:51 pm
Congratulations on your baby! I’ve been hoping you would make it back here. Glad things are going well in life, if not in cyberspace.
19 webgrl // Feb 6, 2006 at 6:52 pm
Hi there so glad to see you back! I don’t think i’ve ever commented before but i’ve read many a time – you got me interested in fiber arts and i now knit.
Sorry for your bloggerfusion! Its anoying i know! Congratulations on your beautiful boy !
Glad to have u back in the blogsphere!:)
20 saltwater princess // Feb 20, 2006 at 6:27 pm
Welcome back and congratulations on the birth of your baby boy!
Life will pick up where it left off, I promise! We missed you!
21 Yarn Tomato » Crocheted Tomato Hat // Mar 16, 2006 at 7:52 pm
[...] Deb crocheted and sent this sweet little tomato hat for the baby. I received it some time ago, but hadn’t yet had time to share it due to my tech woes as well as all of my mommy duties. :-) Now that I’m beginning to catch up, I wanted to shout out a thank you to Deb! [...]
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