I forgot to check the amount of webspace available for a multi-user blog before upgrading it and the thing has crashed. I had to backtrack to find out what I did when a similar incident happened earlier in the year. And then I remembered. I had to get it restored to a former backed up version by my IT guy and then add webspace and then upgrade the thing. Forgot, forgot, forgot!
So hoping he can fix it for me soon so I can increase the space and then re-run the upgrade. Doh!
On a forum I belong to we were discussing the benefits of self-hosted vs free-hosted blogs, in this case with WordPress. One of the members was worried she might lose the increased readership she’s been getting over the past few months if she made a move now. And the reason why a move was being discussed was because another member had highlighted that free-hosted version of WordPress doesn’t take kindly to paid advertising and links being on their free supported sites. They are supposed to be non-commercial. So, the information below gives an outline of the benefits of shifting to paid hosting for WordPress blogs.
If your traffic is increasing then it’s all the more important that you have your site where you have control. There are things you need to think about:
The reasons why I like to have control on a paid hosting site:
You can divert your free hosted blog to your self-hosted blog – I have done this with blogger. The reasons I do this are:
I first decided to do this with my VA blog about 3 or more years ago – it was a scary thing to do but I did it and am really glad because that blog now carries my main domain address and my audience has grown and my PR (Google page rank) as well. I discovered that someone took over my old blogger address because I didn’t think about it in those days and they were selling stuff that had nothing to do with being a VA – lesson learnt. These days when I test blogs on Blogger and then shift them, I make sure I add a message on the top post of the new address and there is a redirect code you can put in html which takes people to the new site in a few seconds. I haven’t tried that with WordPress free site but even if you can’t put the redirect code you could certainly leave a message to say you’ve shifted to a new home address. And the import feature in WordPress does work quite well to shift old posts if you wish to do that.
I hope that the above information will also help you in your decision making if you have been considering a similar move – whether it be from Blogger or WordPress free hosted sites.
Are you getting one of these messages? One of my clients was too with her WordPress blog and nothing I did seemed to help the problem. Did lots of research, asked questions at forums and tried to restore her database once again – she’d already had it done previously. Checked that the index.php file was in place.
We decided to set up a new webspace with a new domain elsewhere and download all the files via FTP and then upload them to the new webspace. I was about 1/2 way through the upload when I discovered something. The webspace I’d set up for her was almost full and I had heaps of files to go.
So I went back to her other webhost and had to do a search in her Account Management system to locate the information relating to her webhosting. Gotta love these hosts that don’t use cpanel for ease of use! Anyway, I discovered that she had 296mb of files in what was supposed to be a 150mb allotment. I think I found the problem!
I immediately filled out a support request to her host to find out if in fact I was correct and could they do a temporary disk space increase so we could do a full backup and run a database export. I emailed my client and told her what I believed I’d found. She’d been told by her host that she’d been hacked and she better upgrade her WordPress.
When I thought about it I remembered an incident a year or two earlier where a small website I was working on (25mbs) gave the same error message when I was trying to switch to a new template I’d uploaded and it took me awhile to figure out why that was. I should have remembered.
So, if you are experiencing that same error message – before anything else – check your webspace allotment. If it’s full, get it increased and then rerun whatever it is you’re doing.
Please let me know if this post has helped you as I did a search extensively looking for help on this issue and did not come across the possiblity of the webspace being full – hopefully I can save you the hours I put in to eventually find this out!
500 Internal Error, full webspace, server error, webpage won’t view
I always upgrade my blogs with some amount of trepidation – should I or shouldn’t I? Some blogs have upgraded fine but others have been a nightmare. Mainly because the templates I choose are not always compatible with the latest version.
So in a moment of craziness I decided to upgrade my Workplace-Ministry blog to a later version of WordPress and was instantly faced with a blank white screen after it told me I could view my blog. Huh? My mind started racing to see what I could do and I started to type up a help message to my IT guy. But then I thought perhaps I should see if I could try and fix it myself. Fortunately I had not closed the window that I’d performed the upgrade in and had opened a new browser window (I love how Firefox uses Tabs!) to view the blog.
I checked my cpanel and noticed the amount of free space was very low. I then went into the disk space usage area and clicked on the WordPress section and it showed 0 megs. mmm, perhaps that’s a clue.
I went back to the window where I’d performed the upgrade and wondered if I backed up through the previous views on that window and redid the upgrade whether that would make a difference? So I did and with a quick prayer and a re-press of the Upgrade button it performed what it did only a few minutes ago. I went back to the blank screen window and refreshed and there was my blog in front of me. Whew!
What is the lesson in this? Well, apart from not panicking, it was not to close a window I’d been working in. If I had I would not have been able to re-use the upgrade button because it would have considered the job had been done. Thankfully I could go back to the beginning and redo it and it worked. Well, another lesson learned for the day – and gratefully so!
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