Okay. Let me explain why JBdN has been down and screwed up for the past week.

It all started a few weeks ago, when my former host, Ableinternet, was hacked. I’d point you to an entry I wrote about the incident, but said entry no longer exists. Anyway, apparently something happened to the server then, which is the computer that ran my website. I guess the hack did some irreparable damage to the server, so Ableinternet decided to shut itself down, and thus sold our accounts to AffordableHOST.

Now, AffordableHOST didn’t receive any of our files, because the Ableinternet server was corrupted. So basically if you didn’t keep backups of your files (which any competent webmaster should do), you had to start over from scratch. I, personally, was caught somewhere in the middle. I’d been backing up my blog once a month, so I had all my entries saved up until October 4th, plus all the other content which is always saved on my computer, then uploaded to the ‘Net. So I only lost a month’s worth of files, which while semi-upsetting and irritating to me, left me in much better shape than some other former Ableinternet clients. Actually, some peoples’ stupidity in this regard is amazing. I was in AffordableHOST’s tech support chat room, trying to figure out to sign up for my new account with them. Some guy was really angry because AffordableHOST didn’t have any of his old files — which I should mention, they aren’t responsible for — and he had lost valuable records relating to the clients of his business. When the nice tech support lady asked him if he had any backups, he got even madder and said he hadn’t backed anything up in months. What’s even stupider is, he was bitching about getting something free, when he’d only had the freebie account with Ableinernet. That’s right, the moron was running his business — which he didn’t regularly back up — on a free account. Sigh. Some people.

So things are back to normal now. AffordableHOST seems like a decent Web host; their rates are — he-he — fair, to say the least. And since I also have five times the bandwidth that I had at Ableinternet (now 5 gig), I’ll be able to run a few other sites off this account, and save some money in the process. I also learned a valuable lesson: back up my blog once a week.

Until next time.

JAB