Recently, I’ve had more time for my site and the internet (is that a good thing?) so I’ve been able to have some fun on the forums I peruse. After the hacking and lack of updates though my blog has taken a huge hit. I’m excited when I get more than 10 hits a day right now

I hope it isn’t related to the fact that I was off work sick 3 of the last 5 days. I hear that my boss was investigating how much sick leave I have (more than 2 weeks) and imagine she is quite concerned that I won’t be at work again. Although I’d love to do that I’m somewhat to lazy to have to keep getting medical certificates and I want to see the pleasant colleagues at least once more. I wonder if I’ll see them after I leave?

Do you keep friends when you change jobs? I have to say that I rarely do. I don’t treat them as friends either but I have with this bunch in some ways so maybe I will have some ‘real’ friends to say goodbye too this time around.

I wasn’t sure if this week, or weeks, would end! It has been an incredible rollercoaster that I’ve been on in the past 2 weeks. The ups were full of stomach butterflies and the downs were full of… stomach butterflies but bigger mean ones.

I have survived it though and here I am on a Sunday afternoon sipping some citrus delicious green tea and realising that my very favourite mug is chipped… oh well.

So, I have this incredible urge to format this post in ‘YAY versus ‘BOO’ mode and as such… I will.

I had a great 27th birthday filled with unexpected gifts! Including some delicious brownies, though don’t get me wrong they weren’t ‘special’ just yum – YAY!

My period was late and my birthday began with dread and thoughts of being with child *shudder* – BOO!

My period was one of my unexpected gifts! (TMI? Because, really biggest YAY there was – well, until this point anyway) – YAY!

I missed getting a phone/real interview with a very possible job prospect because my ‘interviewer’ was sick!! Seriously, she called me and I had to re-schedule and she didn’t tell anyone!! – BOO!

I interviewed for a job for a web hosting company!!! Awesome right? I didn’t know there was one in my city! – YAY!

I wore incredibly wonderful, but incredibly high and painful boots to that interview and butchered my poor feet! Blisters half the size of pinky toes *cries* – BOO!

I got the job! Hurrah, I start in 2 weeks… I’ve known for more than a week now, it was the hardest secret to keep from my colleagues. No more secrets now though – YAY!

A certain consultant at my work made me want to poke myself in the eye with a fork! They are one of the reasons I accepted the job… and the boss knows muahahahaha! Unfortunately, the very thought of him makes me still want to do the fork thing. BOO!

Said colleague relies on me, pretty much completely! And I leave in 2 weeks. Take that punk! (too mean?) – YAY!

My website got hacked. It has never happened to me EVER and for some reason I couldn’t find a copy of my index.php so I had to wing it. Why do people do that? I have a harmless blog damnit! Die hackers! (will this attract them to me?) – BOO!

The lovely Jana saved me. Yes, I am a hosting refugee – it’s too bad as my host has big opportunities but the sites just keep going down – but that is ok, thankfully even though there are hackers in the world there are also lovely people! – YAY!

I think I’ll leave it on a happy note but mention that my local DVD place still hasn’t got my reserved copy of ‘Kick Ass’ ready and the pay phone ate my money!

It’s ok though because I have a fixed site and some citrus delicious tea.

Recently, my partner decided he wanted a website (again) and so we got to work on it and here is where we have gotten currently. He also has a forum attached which is phpBB. The website stuff is fine, if he has a question I don’t know I look it up and more or less it is an easy fix or add on but where the forum is concerned I pull out my hair!

He would like a list of most recent topics/posts in the forum to be displayed on the site, sounds easy enough right? Well, I’m still yet to do it. I’ve scoured ever phpbb forum I can find and yet my brain still hurts. It is now to the point where I’ve given up in frustration… any phpBB experts out there?

It has been nice to use more CSS though and get the hang of PHPincludes and I even validated my website! For the first time in her history, Lazily is validated! Doesn’t she just shine?

In all of this I’ve learnt more about cpanel too and my host is helping more learn more as I help him out with tickets and the like. They’re a very supportive host is Rewind and none of my questions are ever stupid.

As my confidence increases I’ve been able to answer questions on forums and overall help people out. It’s kind of incredible the week I’ve had.

So where does it all lead? Well, I signed up for my first SOTM competition and I’m coming second so far! I was scared I’d be dead last with only my vote to my name :P I’d love your help if you’d like. Click the button below to go to voting:

Writing Mistress was actually quite hard, I just don’t know what to write about me. What do people want to know that is of any interest? Generally, I don’t find myself overly interesting so it makes it hard.

Also, I’ve been playing with WP plugins. Now I can see what you do and when you do it (insert evil laugh here). Yes, I’ve added some stats and a who’s online plugin. All very neat! I love seeing where my audience is from, apparently I should be nice to east coast Americans and… somewhere that I think is in Europe – yes, yes I suck at geography ok! I’m sorry Europeans, tell me where you’re from and I’ll be super nice – all very exciting!

I’m also looking into a few more tweaks and such. I’m having a lot of fun with it really. Let me know if there is a plugin you can’t live without and I’ll check it out.

And lastly, I’m guessing you guys don’t like long posts… previous post wasn’t well received and yet, I was so proud! Oh well, back to the less serious things in live it seems.

Then out of the mist came my site monitor saying ‘Uh, your shit is down! And has been for 24 hours’ so I wasn’t the only one blind to Lazily. Re-emailed my host and asked what is up? Host looked into it more and BAM! Fixed a corrupted something or other and Lazily is open to the world again. Phew.

Earlier that day:

Can you hear me?

The site has been down for a week now but my host assures me all is good to go now. Now, lets hope I can access the site at home. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Also, I joined Rev.iew.me a few weeks ago. It’s an awesome reviewing community. I haven’t received anything but honest feedback. There doesn’t seem to be any meanness around. It just feels like people who want to help other people improve their website. I wish there was more of a community though. Even just a forum would be nice. Maybe that is to come.

Also, lastly on the Lazily front, I will be creating ‘About’ pages in the near future. I had a suggestion that it could improve my blog and you know what? It probably will so keep an eye out for that.

Now to go tweak!

And yet, not everyone can be pleased. I heard people complaining that it was just too cold today *shakes head* some people are never happy! Right now, I’m sitting here, with a tshirt and I have goosebumps as the breeze flows over my arms but I’m not moving, it’s just so nice being cool again.

As a side note, my website is now varying shades of blue! I wanted to update it to something a little more summery, I was thinking apricot, pineapple and citrus hues but then… well then, perhaps I looked outside and saw the sky? And it all changed! Let me know if it’s too bright or if anything is too small or too big and I’ll tweak here and there… this time I promise to get some decent smilies Maybe.

After 2 weeks of being with HostCrave they decided the server they were on wasn’t stable enough to stay with so transferred all of us over to a new server/host. I had no issues they were doing all the hard stuff while I only had to update the nameservers… piece of cake!

Unfortunately, Lazily’s nameservers are still in Rachel’s name from way back when I won Lazily.org in a competition (well, I won a domain name in a competition and chose Lazily.org). Up until recently it has worked quite well as I haven’t had need to change nameservers so I just pay her the annual fee. The last 3 months I think I’ve had her change them 3 – 4 times and this time she was flat out and didn’t get the chance so, yes, Lazily down time.

Then, the nameservers changed – YAY – and I assumed it’d all look as it did, but it didn’t my databases didn’t like me but cpanel said they were a-ok.

I, just now, realised that somehow in the transfer everything except the database user had come over so, obviously there was no connection to my database!

I learn something new everyday lol.

Anyhoo, Lazily is back up! Hurrah! And *fingers crossed* there won’t be anymore changes for the near future.

So it turns out that my first ‘hosting me’ experience was less than ideal. Initially, the support was great and I felt so at ease going with Parade Hosting. Unfortunately, being so excited about the idea I didn’t investigate enough. I didn’t take the time to find out the owner was passing Parade over to someone else or what their reputation was, I just jumped on in!

I signed up and was told 24 hrs and an invoice I’d have… but I didn’t. Everything just took so. long.
So I was finally a member of Parade and transferring everything over and getting it all sorted out and everything was working and then it went down… and came up and went down and up, down, up, down and oh my how painful!

I got banned from accessing my own Cpanel, I couldn’t add additional domains and when logging a ticket I received one word replies. It was so disappointing to see the lack of support Parade had considering the community the forums appeared to have.

Then I found out more about Jonno, the new owner. Jonno who had multiple jobs and other hosting companies and more other responsibilities than I can count. Every time Parade went down another job or responsibility was revealed but they were never excuses… never! How could we ever think that? How could we ever think anything other than perfection about Jonno? For he had lovingly taken over Parade and kept the support forums even though he detested support forums! Should we not bow down to him?

Apparently we should. All of the mods on the forum do. Here is just a few of the replies I received when questioning the service or getting frustrated with its unreliability:

@Everyone else: What people fail to realize is that Jonno is human, too. And unless we replace his brain with a computer and install some sort of satellite internet access in his body, he can’t possibly be online 24/7.

If the service isn’t satisfactory, you can leave when you wish. No one is forced to stay with services they’re not satisfied with.

Either stick it through until services are repaired or go on your merry way. I’m so very tired.

I believe it’s down.
:O
Nobody’s complained, so I doubt he knows.
Closing the topic, to prevent complaining.

I felt so supported! There is so much bias over there! No talking about other hosts, no negative comments about the service, no complaining… unless you’re Jonno of course. Jonno can complain about everyone else and how they’re being so very unfair to him because he’s just so very important and so very, very busy!

I dealt with most of it time and again with promises of a better service and a new server and this and that but they never came.

Then, the last straw, the site was down and as advised by the mods I email Jonno and receive no response. The site is down for hours and yet, nothing. I leave it be and come back the next morning and the site is up! But the SQL server is down again… for days but I should be patient. Just be more patient! No, I don’t think so.

Thankfully, I was noticed by rival hosts and Brad from HostCrave gave me an excellent deal and helped endlessly to get me transferred over as fast as possible! Less than 24 hrs and everything was changed! However… the SQL server was STILL down over at Parade and I had to play the waiting game.

Finally it came back up and I backed up my database as fast as I could. Phew, especially considering that Parade is down again and has been off and on for the last few days apparently… and where has the fearless leader been? Missing.

All in all, what have I gotten out of this experience? Do more investigation of your host! And especially? don’t go with Parade!