Computer Troubles

Yesterday I added Jetpack, a WordPress plugin to my new blog, and at some point nothing worked and I could not uninstall it. This blog is run on what is called a self-hosted WordPress installation. I still like to get under the hood so to speak and tweak even an automatic installation. That’s where something went wrong yesterday as I tried to edit a new contact form for you to easily email me and keep spammers at bay.

I had zippo control over the site and could not even take it down via the menus. I could not even back up the work I had done, just in case I needed to start from scratch. I use Backblaze to back up my laptop (and subsequently any mobile device linked to my laptop), but this site is not on my laptop 🙁

But then I went in through the backend, the cPanel, and renamed the offending plugin folder and voila, I could see the blog again. The image in this post is a snapshot of what cPanel looks like. It’s pretty similar to file directories on your computer, desktop or laptop. You can browse around, upload and download files, and a whole lot more….including getting into trouble if you move, delete or rename some critical file. Today the developer of the plugin that caused me difficulties removed a connection with a server they could access, and I removed the rest today. And I realized that I could have backed up the files from that backend as well. But rebuilding the site would not be easy from such a backup.

Jetpack is a plugin that usually once installed gives many valuable enhancements to blogs. Something about my site setup created a conflict and I won’t be using that plugin for now.

Phew!