So, a couple of days ago I let you know that I was turning a corner with this blog, at least for a little while. I’m looking for opportunities to connect with missionaries, hoping to find something I can do to serve those who are on the field.
It would thrill me to learn I can offer something that will help missionaries stay in the field longer and be more connected with their supporters without taking focus or time from their primary ministry focus.
I’m happy to tell you that I’ve already gotten a couple of responses and recommendations of more people to contact. If you’re a missionary, I’d love it if you would take my (really short) survey. And if you know any missionaries, it would be great if you could connect us. I promise I won’t spam them or anything.
What I didn’t tell you
What I didn’t tell you is that I’ve also started a daily writing challenge. So, now on my fourth day, I’m at about fifty percent. I wrote really late on the first day, and then missed the second day. The real struggle was yesterday, though.
I went to write a blog post and discovered that my site was down.
Not good
Yeah. All I was getting was a blank page. And the couple of tools I have that allow me to dial into the back panel let me know I was looking at a database error. So I got to work doing the couple of things I knew to do. But they didn’t work.
After a few minutes of trying things and researching online I started to get worried and was checking my database backup. I discovered it had been weeks since my backup had run properly. Unfortunately, since I hadn’t written a post for a while before Monday, I hadn’t checked the backups until yesterday.
That was such a Barney Fife mistake; I should have known better. And I was really starting to sweat the thought of losing 5+ years of blog posts.
Thankfully, a friend came to the rescue and sent me to a great resource that got me back on track in less than ten minutes. Talk about an answer to prayer!
My site is up and I’ve gotten my automated backup running too. I still don’t have all my favorite plugins activated because I need to figure out which ones are conflicting (that’s what was causing the error).
I missed it
Unfortunately, when I got my site back up, it was really late and I didn’t hit my writing challenge. But I did learn a few things.
- It’s OK not to know everything. But it’s also good to know a lot of people.
- Always make sure your backups are running.
- Always back up just before running plugin updates
How about you?
Was there a time when you had an unexpected challenge to overcome? What was it and what did you do?
