I have titled this post a complaint and it is. The Curmuedgeonspeaks seems the appropriate location for complaints. The problem with this complaint is that it is difficult to identify a specific target. It seems more like a situation in which someone within a group should take responsibility, but everyone blames someone else.
I believe in owning my own content and this is why I rent server space to host several blogs and other content I have written. Some of this content appears elsewhere, but I want to control the original material I offer to others.
When I began putting my content online, I did this from a server that sat on my desk. For those of you who post to Facebook, X, Instagram, or some other location, this may seem surprising. How did you do that? Well, anyone can run a server and it used to be easy. I used to do a lot of workshops for educators and I would demonstrate how I could turn any Macintosh into a server in 10 minutes. This used to be easy and it is still possible. The problem is how others will find you. Most situations now make use of what is called dynamic IPs. The address (your URL) is a name that actually is useful only for being connected to an IP number (a dotted quad). At this moment I happen to connected from 166.196.68.84. The problem with dynamic IPs is that this number if assigned when you connect and it changes. So, to get my classroom demos to work, I had to distribute the dotted quad I happened to be using so the teachers do use it instead of words to connect to my temporary server. Anyway, because I worked at a University and did research with my server I was assigned a permanent IP that allowed my “address” to be worth sharing.
At some point, I began creating free content to be posted in association with textbooks I wrote and received money based on sales. So, even while free, I considered this material might be considered a conflict of interest with my university duties and I began to purchase server space from a company that provided this capability.
One thing about running your own server, you learn a lot about how things work and must take responsibility for many things. I wanted to do things beyond just posting web pages and had to develop the skills necessary to install and maintain server software, database software, and application software. This was something I had to do anyway because I wrote the applications I used in my research from scratch (sometimes with the assistance of graduate students) and taking advantage of application software is not that difficult if you already write applications. Still, there was always something to address. Any update to any of the components of the system (server, database, application) had to be applied as a change in one component may impact whether another component worked.
At some point, the hosting company I used began to make use of scripts that would take care of these installs and updates automatically. I took advantage of these scripts and that ended up being a tremendous time saver, but also the beginning of my present problems. Once you give up control and responsibility, it becomes difficult to go back. You are not exactly certain what the script has done and what you have to do to take care of your own maintenance.
So, here are some specifics. Among them is the culprit.
My server host – Bluehost
The scripting company – Softaculous
The application company – Concrete
As I explain above, I had created a lot of free content to provide interested educators related to our textbooks, but available to anyone. This material was originally developed with a sophisticated web authoring environment (Dreamweaver). Things worked great. At some point, Dreamweaver (now owned by Adobe) decides it was going to a subscription model rather than just selling me the software and the price for access to professional tools was far more than I would really justify paying. So, I decided to switch to a content management tool (Concrete) that was open source and I could install it with a script. With a content management system, I can use a browser to work online rather than creating content on my own equipment and then uploading it. All of this kind of makes sense, but you can probably predict where this is going.
Last week, I noticed that the link to my Concrete system was no longer responding and no one could see the content. I contact Bluehost and after an hour or so, the tech person decides he cannot help me. Bluehost has always been great with support and has helped me address some issues with my blogs (WordPress applications). I was surprised there was nothing Bluehost could do after my previous experiences, but it now seems they have decided to focus mostly on WordPress installs and while the scripts are available, the script company is who you need to contact. The script company which is not who I remember being responsible for the initial install indicates that users need to contact the application developer for any assistance that is required (not something I knew was the case before). The application I am using is open source so they have a community help system which indicates the problem may be an incompatibility between the php or mysql version being run by the host and the version of the application I have installed. OK, updates are often accomplished easily with a functioning app and there is an update, but my app does not let me in so I cannot update. One suggestion the help group suggested was that I roll back the version of PHP I on the server. I am not certain I can do this and I am uncertain how it would impact the other installs I have that are working.
Lessons learned I guess. Hundreds of hours of content writing time were lost because I made the wrong assumptions. I run backups on my other apps, but I was not doing this with Concrete and I am not certain such a possibility exists. The Wayback Machine has saved some, but not all of this content. I can locate some of the content by exploring the database associated with Concrete, but the database is very complicated and getting text out is not that easy.
At least, I am left with an idea for a Curmudgeon blog post. 😉
Save your content locally.