January 01 2008
My New Years Nightmare With PHP5
Tagged Under : Error 500, New Years, PHP5, quit smoking, wahm, wahm business, Wahm Business Magazine, wahms united
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Well, that was definitely not the way I anticipated spending New Years.. nope, not at all.
It was 11:30 pm and I was at the OnlineNewYearsEve.com party when there was a knock at the door. Ok cool, a couple of our neighbors dropped in for a drink. So I put myself on away at the party, and went to have a drink with our friends. About 15 minutes later, I sat down at my puter again so I could get the January issue of the Wahm Business Magazine published when horror struck.
First I got XML errors, which was then replaced by a generic cPanel page congratulating me on having Apache installed and running (oh joy lol) and then the real nightmare - the dreaded Error 500 page.
Yep, my functioning website took a nosedive in less time than it takes to .. well .. (insert your imagination here).
Before total panic set in, I watched the ball drop with my hubby and son - yes, during all of this my 4 year old son was still bouncing all over the place. Then I hit the live chat support that my host offers, the same live chat that I’ve never had a problem with in the past… which last night became the live chat from hell. I tell you, the world was out to get me and the New Year was just minutes old!
*** ggggrrrr… I had this post all written out, then my browser crashed before it automatically saved any further than this point, so now I’m attempting to re-write it hahaha.. oh geez, let’s hope this isn’t a sign of things to come! ***
I’m experienced enough with website hosting to know that if I didn’t change any of my own settings that might cause the miserable Error 500 page, then something must have changed on the server. So there I was, just after the New Year began, waiting impatiently for the live chat operator for more time than I care to admit, even though I was #1 in the cue and it said my wait time should be 30 seconds (HA!). During my wait, I started checking into a few other areas and discovered that I could get into my cPanel ok, so I made a bee-line for the backups just in case I was going to be spending the rest of the night (aka morning) restoring my site. Then I discovered that my site’s admin area was totally messed up too, though at least it wasn’t giving me an Error 500.
Finally, I gave up on the 30 second wait time and logged into my hosting account to submit a critical ticket. Sure enough I was told that an announcement had been made that my host was upgrading to PHP5. Now, with every other service provider that I use, they have the courtesy of sending out an email to inform their customers of planned outages, upgrades etc. Apparently that’s not the case with these guys as I was ‘told’ the announcement was made in their forums. I guess I need to leave their forums open in my web browser 24/7 from now on just to make sure I don’t miss anything - geeez!
For the next 3 hours (yes.. until 4:00 am!), I was busy fixing the errors that my cPanel error log was showing, and finally I was able to get the both the site and the admin area back online. There were still a few quirks that I knew had to be fixed asap, but as my head was about to hit the keyboard, I decided those could wait until a little later in the morning. So I headed off to hit my couch - yes, couch, not bed.
The reason for that? At 3:00 am, my son decided he was done sleeping in his bed, and he curled up on his couch (the loveseat). Instead of shuffling him back into his room with a fight, I just wanted to close my peepers, so I let him be while I grabbed a pillow and blanket and made my bed on the couch. And I slept great too, until 5:00, when little monster decided that his Daddy should be the one on the couch and not me. It was only a few minutes later that he forgot the argument and fell asleep again… until 5:30 am, when he very politely asked for a drink and even used please and thank you. With manners like that, how could I refuse? Uuughhh. I know there was one more wake up call, but honestly I can’t remember what it was about now lol. Then at 10:30, hubby woke me up and sent me off to the bedroom, where I lied my head down on my favorite pillow, and realized my head was pounding.
It was about then that I finally gave up on sleep. So, I got up, popped a few tylenol, had a cup of peppermint tea and sat back down at my puter to finish the fixes. I got them done too! And so, WahmsUnited.com is now back online and the January issue of the Wahm Business Magazine has also been published for your viewing pleasure 
Right now I’m sitting here chewing on a straw (better that then chocolate) because of the fact that as soon as my head hit my pillow at 4:00 am, I quit smoking. No, I didn’t throw out my cigarettes at the stroke of midnight, but I did dump my ashtray and chuck the rest of the pack in the garbage at 4. I feel almost certain that someone decided I needed an extra challenge right at the start of a brand New Year - and I think I survived the challenge however I’m really not happy about it LOL. April Fools Day is in April, not December/January 
| 2.5 |
Dianne
