Learning from My Mistakes

I knew going into this that the technology side of running a website would logically be the biggest issue I'd run into. I mean, I've been traveling most of my life, so that part is just second-nature. Navigating my way through Brazil using sign language... no problem. Pretending I'm engrossed in my book at an Argentinian restaurant because i'm a woman traveling alone.. i'm used to it. But I have never associated the word Apache with a computer, and to me a Unix environment sounds like a happy place where people get high and float around all day picking flowers and eating oatmeal-raisin cookies. This week I have run into one of the biggest headaches yet (or maybe my ability to handle it is wearing thin).

The site we designed has all kinds of fun features, some of which were not working on the cheap, shared server that I have been using to date. As you know from previous posts, the folks at my hosting company are relatively useless... ranking a close second behind my outsourced programmers. Neither party was able to tell me how to get the remaining features working. This is my baby.. of course i'm going to go to every length possible to make it perfect! I finally found out from someone that because I was on a shared server, I was unable to execute some of the scripts that had been written for the website. Of course that 'someone' worked for the hosting company and so obviously the answer to my problems was to upgrade to a virtual server. It sounded pretty cool and heh, it costs more, so it MUST be better. Since no one else had come up with a solution I figured, OK.. virtual server it is.

Several weeks later, a few days of downtime and many, many late nights - oh yeah, and $600+ to have the programmers transfer the site - I feel I have taken 1 step forward and 10 steps back. Turns out the virtual server doesn't come equipped with any of the easy to use goodies that came with the shared server. Pay more... get less. It also seems that the programmers didn't really know how to make anything work on the new server, hence the delay and cost.

The best part is, as soon as I switched to the new server, the hosting company tore down the old one (its really the only time I've seen them act quickly on anything). In retrospect I should have been suspicious when a week after ordering the upgrade I called the hosting company and one of the support staff told me the delay was because they were probably out at Best Buy getting the hardware to build out space for my new server. So much for 'virtual'.

So, you'll be happy to know that the site now accommodates the newsletter function and the emails that are set on a timer. Unfortunately, I no longer have access to our email accounts, to the web stats package, or to the FTP. Oh yeah, and it seems that anybody who tries to sign up for the site that is not on my IP address gets a fatal error. This one I found out by chance when a friend sent me an email asking if she'd been blocked from signing up because she waited so long. I double-checked from my end and had no problems. I called another delinquent friend in London who had not yet signed up either. I forced him to log on and sign up and sure enough.. fatal error.

So the fun continues and so do the delays. From one day to the next I am not sure what is progress and what is merely funny. But since the programmers are gone until Monday, I will just have to wait to find out. The moral of the story: Your children don't have to be perfect. Let them run with what they've got and you'll all be better off.

Have a good weekend!