I’ve blogged in the past about my website issues.
In 2016 I switched over from a Blogger site to WordPress when the CandiKay.com domain became available. I was familiar with WP because of work I’d done for other sites leading up to my changing over. It was a bit of a challenge at first – I’d never created my own site outside of Blogger before – but I was happy with the finished product.
In the past almost 3 years I have had one issue after another. As in, issues so bad I’ve had to rebuild my website from the ground up several times. 2 days before Christmas nobody could reach my site because of the HTTP Error 500 message. I contacted GoDaddy (who I host through) and it was fixed in a matter of minutes.
Again… 2 days before Christmas. You know, right after I published Dylan the Bad Boy Reindeer & His Virtuous Mate – a Christmas story.
Fast forward to a few days ago.
I couldn’t access my site. Once again I was seeing the Error 500 message. I couldn’t even access my site’s dashboard via GoDaddy. I contacted GoDaddy and was told that I was out of luck unless I wanted to pay them to disable one plugin. I wasn’t even told WHAT plugin, just that they were fairly certain they knew what caused the issue but they couldn’t tell me anything until I paid $50 or $80.
I’d have no problem paying to get my site back. Had they stopped with the $50 or $80 it would’ve been okay. They didn’t. Each person I spoke with on the first day – I spoke with 2 – threw out all these other services that they insisted I would need to pay for to possibly get my site fixed. This was after I was told it was likely just a plugin that simply needed to be disabled – something they could’ve done with a click of a mouse on their end.
In other words, my site was being held hostage… again. Long story short, I was able to get back up and running and I did manage to back up my content – no thanks to GoDaddy.
I finally deduced (again, no thanks to GoDaddy) that the issue was with the email subscriber plugin. That’s what I believe caused the problem back in December. I have since deleted that one and started all over again with a new service. I wish I would have done this forever ago.
I think it’s safe to say that when my hosting comes up for renewal again it will be with somebody else. My best friend sent me a link to a new service that looks fantastic. I’m counting down the days until I can transfer. I’d do it now but then I risk losing what I paid for months in advance with GoDaddy.
I was told it was my fault. When I asked them why – right before each crash – there was a ‘down for scheduled maintenance’ message on the site they couldn’t answer. FYI… the ‘down for scheduled maintenance’ happened daily on my site, sometimes several times in a 24 hour period. If I couldn’t access it I’m assuming others couldn’t either.
I should also note that the same exact issue occurred last year with a site I was using for a pen name. I was never on there (I suck at posting here. Can you imagine me trying to do it on another site?) so I just did away with it completely and turned that WP site into Reindeer Secrets.
That’s the end of my rant. Thankfully, unlike 2 days before Christmas, I wasn’t in the process of promoting a book when it happened this time.
As you can see the site is a little different. It has pretty much the same things it had before minus a couple of pages that I felt weren’t needed anymore. In the coming days and/or weeks all my previous posts will be transferred over and I should be as good as new, or hopefully better.
I’m also trying to shrink the HUGE Candi Kay logo on the top. No matter how many times I change the size it reverts back. Hopefully I can get it back to normal soon enough.
So now I cross my fingers that I caught the problem and have eliminated it. If it happens again, I’ll probably throw my hands up. 😉
Until next time,
Candi Kay
P.S. If you were subscribed to my email alerts you’ve been resubscribed. You may get welcome emails as if you just subscribed. If so, disregard. It won’t allow me to just transfer the names and emails over without doing the ‘welcome’ stuff all over again – only this time hopefully more cleaner and professional looking. 🙂