Loving Your Blog in Sickness and in Health

July 10, 2012/14 Comments/in Blog /by Jill Colonna

Did you know what happened to the website over the last two weeks?

Thinking it was just a crazy dream, I woke up and discovered the nightmare: the site was down and not a temporary hiccup.

No big deal. ‘It’s just a website,’ a friend reasoned on Facebook. He was right, but when your blog instantly disappears without a proper backup and all your labours of love are magically reduced to one BLANK page staring defiantly at you, it’s pretty soul destroying. ‘Try not to go down with the site,’ I told myself, c-a-l-m-l-y. My main worry was that everyone would just forget about Mad About Macarons; as if nothing had happened over the last year and a half. As the website’s email account is still down, I have missed seeing blog updates and messages from friends.

The company that hosted and originally built the site eventually explained that their system detected a virus/hacker situation and so the website shut down completely. There were no backups containing the new site design. A word to my blogger friends: learn from my lesson and back up your site on your hard drive. Conducting the full backup function on WordPress means nothing if you don’t download it as a zip file on your hard drive.

The site was restored thanks to Melissa Hartfiel of Fine Lime Designs, who redesigned the site in March. Melissa – thank you so much for all your help, courage and incredible patience, especially as we have been dealing with extreme time differences and lack of hosting communication. Now with a new host we’re moving on and catching up.

I’m back up and running – give or take a few photos missing and more tweaks needed. Please don’t be shy at leaving comments (I tried to turn it off here but can’t – this is not a sympathy post, just keeping you up to date.) You’ve no idea how your words of encouragement help ensure my mad posts come your way!

Now, let’s get that Yuzu post up again finally…

14 replies

Yvette says:
July 17, 2012 at 8:27 pm

Congrats! happy that you found your site. I bet you are happy with Fine Lime Designs. How did they manage to get it all back. Even the links to your site I have on my site work again!! Take care! Yvette x
Reply
- Jill says:
  July 18, 2012 at 12:15 pm
  
  I am ever so happy with Fine Lime Designs. Melissa worked so hard doing a fabulous job to get it back together and with so much patience too! Yes, all links are working again. Phew!
  Reply
Vicki Bensinger says:
July 14, 2012 at 4:42 pm

OMG Jill I would have died if that had happened. All the hours of hard work sitting in front of the computer only to have that all gone.

Thank goodness someone stepped up to the plate and fixed it. Your lucky day and yes, a lesson to be learned for all bloggers.
Reply
Ivy says:
July 12, 2012 at 5:06 pm

Good to see you back again. It must have been awful. To be frank I do not know how to back-up my blog.
Reply
Jacqueline@HowtobeaGourmand says:
July 12, 2012 at 3:07 am

Jill! How awful. Only Bloggers can appreciate the time and effort put into posts and when the whole blog goes down it must be a real pain.
Pleased to see you are back up and running 🙂
Reply
Laura Hastings says:
July 11, 2012 at 11:27 am

Fantastic to see you up and running again Jill. It must be such a relief! Looking forward to keeping up with you via Le Blog once again 🙂 xx
Reply
Lucy Samuels says:
July 11, 2012 at 10:57 am

Hooray!
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Lora says:
July 11, 2012 at 4:39 am

Wow! what a nightmare. So glad you’re back!!!!!
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Kathy Dean says:
July 10, 2012 at 11:33 pm

Happy to see you’re up and running again! I’ve been checking. I finally found UNsalted pistachios and want to try the pistachio macarons. I noted your Facebook entry about pistachio Macs and I’ve been wanting to try making them.

I’m glad you’re back!
Reply
Liz says:
July 10, 2012 at 11:29 pm

We would NEVER forget about your blog!!! I am SO glad to see you back! Hooray. I think I better make sure I know how to back up my blog :/ Thanks for the reminder!
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Pauline aka Mrs Mulford says:
July 10, 2012 at 4:48 pm

Well hello again 😉 and Déjà vu in the nicest way. Good job from Melissa too! If we could just get back to the normal round of regular sweet temptations x
Reply
- Jill says:
  July 12, 2012 at 12:20 pm
  
  Thanks, Pauline. Melissa has been incredible! It’s now back on track and I couldn’t have done it without her.
  Reply
emma says:
July 10, 2012 at 2:45 pm

wahou ça marche !!!!
enfin !!!!
MaM le retour après quelques semaines de repos .
sacré backup 😉
même aux baléares je peux regarder des nouvelles des derniers “yuzu” macs …
merci Jill pour ce super blog !!
you’re the queen of mac.
Reply
- Jill says:
  July 12, 2012 at 12:21 pm
  
  Awe – merci beaucoup, Emma. What on earth are you reading this blog for on an idyllic beach. Get sleeping and snorkelling! (but not together)
  Reply

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It's not 'cos' I happened to paint the Paris pastry map endpapers, but I love this cookbook. I'd no clue I could bake but Jill's Teatime in Paris makes it easy to bake real French pastry. If I can do it so can you.

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