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Over the past two days, I had some issues with my self-hosted WordPress blog at Green and Chic that almost made me throw in the towel.
Thursday afternoon, I logged into my Green and Chic Blog admin and got this message:
Syntax error: syntax error, unexpected T_CONSTANT_ENCAPSED_STRING in /home/greenand/public_html/blog/wp-admin/includes/template.php on line 3274
My heart drops, I panic, I log on to the blog itself and its working fine thankfully. I go to the WordPress.org support to see if this has happened to anyone else before. It turns out that it happened to another user an hour ago, but they were able to solve the problem themselves, closed the question and they were long gone.
I posted a question and got one response that wasn’t exactly helpful. I guess my issue is that I am not that tech savvy when it comes to working with WordPress anything in general and the people on the forums have very little patience for people like me. Every move I make has to be well researched and thought out. I sat and conducted multiple Google searches on how to fix the error. I keep trying to look for anything that had to do with fixing template.php files in WordPress, figuring out what “on line 3274″ means and how to solve it, etc. I emailed the the person who upgraded my blog’s theme a few weeks ago to see if he had any suggestions. He was away from Gmail Talk, Twitter and Meebo so I decided to wait until he popped up online.
Around 10:00PM he appeared on Gmail Talk and gave me some suggestions. Within 5 minutes my blog’s admin was up and running again.
Then…
The next day, I noticed my last post that I published a couple days ago had been wiped out. The first draft was there in admin – a few lines and that was it. I didn’t know how to access any back up to the post (if it exist) so I spent more time rewriting it and trying to remember all of the links I added to it. What’s worse, I had a few reader comments that were gone too. The post is back up and that should have been all she wrote.
And then…
I go out for the day, come home in the evening, log on to the blog and the rest is a blur. The funny thing is, I don’t remember why I decided to do this, but I went into the FTP and deleted my blog. I deleted what I thought was a duplicate! When I went to www.greenandchic.com/blog and saw nothing, I thought that was the end of my life. What in the hell did I just do???
It wasn’t quite the end of the world or my life. After crying on Twitter and on Steve’s shoulder, I hired someone on ScriptLance to help me get my blog back because at that point, I didn’t want to touch it again. It was up and running again by midnight. All I had to do was add a few photos that got lost and to upload the plugins.
What’s the moral of the story? I dont know, dont touch WordPress again and leave the FTP alone? I guess not deleting anything unless I know exactly what I’m doing and to make sure I back up often!
glad you were able to get your blog back with little damage.
i deleted a blog of mine by mistake and had no backup what so ever.
i forgot to add it to
blog backup online.com my hosting company could have restored it, but they would have had to do the entire site, i have several domains under one account and i didnt want that, so i just let it go.
Natural’s last blog post..Why Wait, Buy Now!
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@Natural – I am sorry to hear that! That is a good reminder for me to keep backing it up! I know Kim Woodbridge would be pointing her finger at me right now!
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Backups are the key! I messed up my sidebars a few months back, and lost everything. Had to all be recreated. A simple backup would have fixed this in 10 minutes instead of a full day! Lesson learned…
Anyway, I’m glad it’s all back now for you, Carla. No fun – especially in the heat of when it’s all going on.
Lance’s last blog post..Flip It
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WOW.
I agree: backups are essential.
If you ever have WordPress problems again, try Kim Woodbridge. She’s amazing. http://www.kimwoodbridge.com/
Vered – MomGrind’s last blog post..10 Ways To Hate Yourself As A Woman
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Wow I can sympathize. My disaster was last week, and I didn’t even really know WHAT the problem was since I don’t know that much about WordPress. I threw the kitchen sink at it, including restoring the database, and it worked.
Glad you’re back up and running!
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@Miscbytes – Glad you’re up and running too!
@Vered – Yes, I do know Kim!
She is amazing!
@Lance – Thank you!
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