kipmanley

A Small Orange is currently at the top of the list. I’m also peering at HostGator. But all else being equal, aesthetics make me trust A Small Orange more.

Okay; that’s it. Silence in the face of repeated requests for some update or answer or explanation is inexcusable. If I had more than ego and four years’ blogging invested in my domain name, I’d be volcanically pissed. As it is, I’m just incandescently angry. Time to move, again…

I should maybe add I’ve poked them a couple of times about this problem since yesterday afternoon, and gotten no response.

Further update: despite being assured that the site had been turned back on, I’ve been getting “site not found” errors for almost 24 hours now. I can see the directory via FTP, so theoretically I could upload a new installation of WordPress, but it does me no freaking good if I can’t see it in a web browser.

It could be an especially pokey case of DNS propagation, I guess…

Latest update: was contacted this morning. They’ve restored the domain, except I can’t find it just yet, but I should be able to re-load WP and point it to my database and then when I can find it again we’ll see what we shall see. Further bulletins as events warrant. But it does seem that who you luck-of-the-draw end up with handling your problem makes a huge difference in how that problem is handled.

An update, in case anyone is curious: I prodded them this morning with a list of questions, got a “I’m not familiar with this problem, but I’ll check with the person who was working with you and get back to you” message, which is heaps better than nothing, and then nothing for the past six hours. So I’ve poked them one more time.

I get the sinking feeling I know precisely what I’ll be doing this weekend. Flippin’ whee.

(TextDrive, A Small Orange, HostingMatters, etc. etc. etc…)

That would be a great idea, Eyn, and as soon as I can get someone to answer an email, I’ll be sure to ask why that wasn’t suggested right out of the bat. I’ve done nothing to WP to tweak it that would be lost by replacing it with a clean install. But that wasn’t offered or suggested and is impossible to do at the moment. —Nor was moving me to an evaluation server ever offered, to see if maybe something else was causing the problems. The only solution they had, it seems, was to yank the offending site and offer me a refund if I wanted to move. Well, of course I am at the moment rather inclined to move. They aren’t allowing anyone to see my site. Does me very little good.

To clarify: they weren’t locking me out of the site entirely–removing access to the domain name keeps the (presumably) bad WP-whatever from “freaking out.” So if they’re correct about that, I understand why they did it. Just makes it impossible to tweak the install and see if it can be fixed with, say, a caching plugin. So that’s frustrating.

But what’s also frustrating is that the outages have continued after the domain name got pulled. So basic logic would seem to indicate they weren’t caused by the (presumably) bad WP-whatever. At least not on my site. I understand basic logic sometimes isn’t with computers, but still.

Anyway. Just checked–the other sites were back up, and I can FTP in, so I’m downloading and grabbing every damn thing I can while I can.

Still haven’t heard back from them. A simple “Patience, we’re working on it, it might take a bit” would be (would have been?) enough.

I can’t do anything with the domain; they’ve pulled it. And the continuing server outages mean I can’t get at the files any other way.

But I would expect a company that works as closely with WordPress as Dreamhost to be able to handle 2.0, Akismet, and a very common backup plug-in that’s only active when you’re making a backup. Which I haven’t done since Friday. What with all the outages.

300 – 400 unique visitors a day.

That’s nothing.

Dreamhost is talking about how maybe it’s hits from aggregators—feed-readers and the like. But I don’t think they know for sure. Anyway, they aren’t people visiting. It’s sites and programs that read your syndication feeds. I’m not high-profile. I don’t have that many people subscribing to me, honest.

Okay! On the one hand, I got it to run.

I went to the Domain panel of my Dreamhost setup and edited it, flipping the switch to turn off “Run PHP as CGI.” It takes a minute for this to take effect. You can tell it’s happened because when you try to run a WordPress page, it gives you fatal errors.

Then I deleted my WordPress directory, though I left my database in place, and re-loaded WordPress. Because I’d left the database in place, I didn’t have to re-install it. Then I made sure import-mt-markp2.php and my import file were in place, and I ran import-mt-markp2.php. Success! No more “No input file specified” error!

However, it doesn’t appear to do anything.

It loads all my entries just fine, but the slug is set to the standard WP format: hyphens, not underscores, and based on the title, not the keywords.

I assumed at first it was because I had virtual site permalinks set (to match the eventual MT pattern), and this was maybe overwriting what import-mt-markp2.php was trying to do, and so I turned it off. I emptied out the database, re-installed WP, and re-ran import-mt-markp2.php. But again, it didn’t do anything: the slug still ignores any entries in keywords, and dirifies it according to WP style, not MT style.

But at least I got it to run. Hmm.

(It also appears to have deleted all my trackback pings. Hmm again.)

Thanks, TechGnome. That did throw me at first, but I figured it out.

2fargon, I dunno what’s up. It’s obviously not a problem with your script: it has something to do with either .htaccess, or the PHP CGI that Dreamhost uses, or some combination of them that’s beyond me. Dreamhost themselves weren’t terribly helpful, and I haven’t found anything that suggests an answer. I may give up on replicating the old titling system anyway, and write redirects, much as that galls me.

But thanks! If anything does turn up, I’ll post it here.

Perhaps I’m missing something…

If I run the file, all I get is a page saying, “No input file specified.” Both import-mt-markp2.phps and import-mt.php have been edited to point to my MT export file, as per instructions.

Hmm. Poking around a little, I see that this might have something to do with running PHP CGI. I’m hosted with Dreamhost, who do use that, though you can turn it off. But I haven’t had a problem yet with making test posts and running other little WordPress php thingies, and if I do turn PHP CGI off, it appears to totally munge up WordPress and I have to reinstall it. —Also, it appears this “No input file specified” might instead have something to do with .htaccess. Or maybe permissions. Ack! Has anyone else run into this problem and solved it?

It might not happen today, but I’ll be sure to let you know. Thanks so much!