On Sunday morning, I woke up to an awful email from my website provider, announcing that my account had been suspended. And they would delete my account permanently if I didn’t resolve the issue within 10 days.

I dislike getting rid of old copies of things so much that I never write in pencil. It's too easy to erase. Also, if I make a mistake on paper, I cross it out with my pen. None of this white-out nonsense. I'm not a hoarder type by any means, but when it comes to my writing, you can bet that I keep it ALL.

Eeeeek!

I know it’s just the Internet, it’s just a blog, but it still made me really upset. Especially because not only was this blog suspended, but so was my rhetoric blog, my food diary blog, and The Food Label Movement website.

Not cool at all.

So I tried phoning customer service, and they sent me an email with a half a dozen links to figure out the problem, but it was all jibberish to me. Then I went to my graphic designer and pleaded for help ASAP, and lo and behold, within two days she has fixed the issue! Apparently one of my plugins was in beta mode and I shouldn’t have been using it on my website (oops). It was a good one too; it tracked all my stats. It told me there were 19,000 of you visiting my blog each month! I liked that plugin.

At any rate, all that was required was a simple deactivation and deletion of the plugin, and all appears to be fixed. Needless to say, my graphic designer friend is my new hero. And the second customer service dude I spoke with was quite helpful.

I learned a couple very important things from this experience (because what’s the point in having something frustrating happen if you don’t learn from it?):

• It’s not the end of the world if you lose your site. I did a lot of thinking, particularly on the Sunday when I was at a complete loss for what to do, and I went through a worst-case-scenario thought process. It wasn’t so bad. True, I could lose all of the content I’d worked on for the past three years, and I could lose everything I had put into The Food Label Movement website, but these things can always be rebuilt again. Or you could realize that you’re ready to move on and put it behind you. Either way, there’s the opportunity for a fresh start if it all gets deleted.
• Always back stuff up. ALWAYS. Thank goodness for my graphic designer and her knowledge of backups. I have a plugin to back things up, but honestly I’m not sure exactly how/if it works and all. I should get to know my backup system a little better.
• Before you install a new plugin, check to make sure it’s not in a beta version. If it says that it shouldn’t be used on live websites, it shouldn’t be used on live websites. kStats Reloaded, you’re freaking awesome. But you’re not worth losing my blogs over.
  

The earliest form up backup I can remember using was these 3.5 " floppy disks. Up until a couple years ago, I had NO IDEA that the disks used to be huge and were actually FLOPPY. True story.

Please please please keep in mind the above lessons so that you don’t have to receive an email saying your account’s been suspended. Trust me, it is not a fun experience!

Anyway, here’s hoping everything stays working. I’m back. I think. 😉

Did everyone have a nice weekend?