The blog is back, long live the blog!
For all of you who tried to visit this site past about 10 AM today, you probably were met with an assortment of messages indicting the blog had gone down. That happens now and then, unfortunately, but this was different. By sometime in the afternoon, all the posts had disappeared – that’s all 21,707 published posts and over a thousand drafts.
Quite a mouthful. Vanished.
At that point, I could get to the backend of the blog, but the posts had disappeared internally, too. I also could not post any new posts; I’d get an error message when I tried. I know I’m supposed to backup the blog periodically, but it’s a long process and because I knew (or thought I knew) that the host backs it up regularly, I had let that chore slip and hadn’t done it in years.
I spent the entire day and evening talking to the host on the phone and trying to figure out a way around it, and waiting for the “escalation” team to get back to me. The phone conversations were frustrating exercises in miscommunication. I’ll skip the details, except to the say that after many hours, phone conversations, and emails, I was losing faith that it would get fixed.
And then suddenly: voila! The site is restored to the way it was on September 4, 2025. I’ll take it.
Thing is, the WordPress version is still the updated one that – supposedly – broke the blog in the first place. So I feel very wary. I think I’m going to have to try to modernize a bit more, although my own skills are rusty and web developers are mega-expensive. If anyone has any ideas about a solution, please let me know.
If the blog goes down again – perish the thought – please go to this ancient site where I’ll try to post a notice: https://neoneoneocon.blogspot.com .
Glad to see you are back. BTW, Duck Duck Go “Search Assist” (AI?) directed me to https://neo-neocon.blogspot.com/, which had no updates.
Selfy:
Yes, it’s weird. The site they directed you to was a blog I had till 2007, when I migrated to WordPress. But for years I would post on that original one when the newer WordPress one went down. Somewhere along the line, though, Blogger/Blogspot decided I shouldn’t post on that older one anyone, and changed it to the neoneoneocon.blogspot URL. Now I can post on that later blogspot URL, but not the original one.
Go figure.
Also glad to see that you’re back up and running!
And, please do get in the habit of doing regular backups. This task can be a pain, but it will help avoid a disaster. There could well be a way to set up an automated backup that could be scheduled to take place during a “non-intrusive” time (e.g.3:00 AM).
Only losing a couple of days’ posts is definitely getting off easy. Fortunately not too many events happened in the interval.
Welcome back Boss.
For a minute…I thought I missed the Rapture. 😉
Glad to see your site is working well, neo.
🙂
Whew! A year ago, in an act of self-flagellation, I pared my blog list to just four. I thought it would force me to get away from the computer and do the yard work. So the loss yesterday of 1/4 of my reading list hurt. Glad you’re back up and running. By the way, paring the reading list doesn’t work for me; I just reread the same four blogs, hoping for a new post. The yard’s still a mess.
@John Guilfoyle, 🙂
I’ve been reading about Blogger suddenly removing the blog “No Pasaran” and I was afraid WordPress had ghosted you for no reason. Welcome back!
Isn’t technology and tech support wonderful!
If I put on my tin foil hat…has this ever happened to a left leaning blog?? Just wondering. I know that computer tech is only as good as those programmers who never seemed to have learned that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, so these things do happen.
physicsguy:
In my case, I really think it was a technical issue rather than some sort of motivated attack or policy. But who knows?
Yes, tech people update WordPress very often, and at some point the updates become incompatible with an older site. And “older” can mean just eight or so years old, which is when I redesigned this site. They assume you have an army of web developers helping you (most won’t touch a job for less than $5K). Or, they just don’t care. Their job is to patch security issues, which they also have to do. But how many updates are necessary security patches, and how many are just tweaking things for the fun of it?
neo: my own skills are rusty and web developers are mega-expensive
Have you tried working with an AI to guide you. I’ve had good results working with Claude.ai and Perplexity.ai for website development and Linux details. I’ve found that it’s important to go step-verify-step-verify and to orient myself towards learning and guidance. (When I make my role “the hands of Claude” I get into trouble.)
AppleBetty:
Thing is, I don’t want to redesign the blog. I recently designed a site for selling Gerard’s book, and it wasn’t easy. What I need is someone to look at the design here and especially the code here, and bring it more up-to-date so an update won’t crash it. Even with AI’s help I doubt I could do that, nor do I know what questions to even ask.
Welcome back! Was starting to think bad thoughts since ‘Free Republic’ site was kaput yesterday also.
I have no skills to offer you, Neo, but I wonder if one of your regular commenters might be able to give you a little pro bono or reduced-rate assistance. Some of them sound very competent with digital matters.
Welcome back!
Sorry you had to waste your Sunday on the line with tech support, but we appreciate your efforts to re-establish the neophile community!
I have mentioned before, for quite a few years I had a fairly popular blog “threedonia.com” with two compatriots. I had written thousands of posts over a period of 4 or 5 years, as had my compatriots. And we had quite a few regular commenters with some posts’ comments numbering in the hundreds.
Then… One day… Gone. One of my colleagues researched it with Word Press
and it seems hackers attacked us for some reason. We had outages before when I was able to restore from back-ups, but this one was much more severe. Poof! Years of work and writing gone. I pulled my two favorite posts from the wayback machine and have them saved in the cloud, but otherwise there is nothing left of 5 years of creative output.
I’m glad and grateful you’re back.
A year ago one of my websites was disabled. I’ve worked on it since 2017, publishing Scripture readings for each Sunday, plus Hebrew and Greek notes on passages. It draws on my training in biblical languages and represents about two or three thousand hours of work. That was scary. I contacted WordPress and appealed and it was back up a day later.
Regular backups are a pain but it’s more painful to lose years of work.
Rufus wrote, “Years of work and writing gone.” Ouch. That hurts.
IIRC, WordPress has internal management problems. Link to Grok.
Which is to say, it might not be the most stable platform going forward.
@ neo
neo neo neo con has a ring to it.
Also, another Too Many Requests just now. Was getting them frequently before your site crashed, and also slowness.
Hi Neo,
I asked Claude what problems he saw with the site and how he could help you. I sent the conversation to your email. If you decide to proceed, Claude Pro will cost $20/month. (Email me and I’ll donate for the first two months.)
Rick67,
Are you willing to share a link?
neo:
Leaving aside all the AI hype, AI is good at tech support. Here’s my interaction with ChatGPT 5 on your problem. I am quoting it because it provides a basic grounding in your situation that other readers might find interesting as well as Chat’s recommendations.
I can’t guarantee that Chat is not hallucinating or out of date, but sounds reasonable.
_________________________________
huxley: She says she is supposed to backup her blog somehow. The blog is over twenty years old and is over 7 GB. It seems strange to me that WordPress doesn’t do a daily incremental backup.
ChatGPT 5: That does sound strange at first glance, but the key is this:
1. WordPress vs. the Hosting Provider
WordPress itself (the software) doesn’t automatically back up your site. It just runs your blog.
The host (Bluehost, SiteGround, DreamHost, etc.) is usually the one who offers backups. Some hosts do daily incremental backups as part of their plans, but others only guarantee weekly or “best effort” backups unless you pay for a higher tier.
So while many hosts say “we back up your site,” the fine print may mean “at some point in the last few days.” That explains how four days got lost.
2. Why 7 GB Matters
Size limits. Some backup systems aren’t great at handling very large WordPress sites (7 GB is big for a blog—probably because of lots of uploaded images and media).
Storage cost. Daily incremental backups of a large site can be expensive for a host to keep indefinitely. Some cheap hosting plans only keep one or two snapshots, not rolling daily versions.
3. What Probably Happened
The host hit a crash/corruption event.
Their most recent working backup snapshot was 4 days old.
They restored that one, meaning everything newer was lost.
4. What She Can Do Going Forward
Independent backups. Use a WordPress plugin like UpdraftPlus, VaultPress/Jetpack Backup, or BlogVault. These can do daily (or even hourly) incremental backups and push them to Dropbox, Google Drive, or similar.
Export database + uploads. At minimum, she should set up a cron job (or use the plugin) to dump the MySQL database nightly and sync the /wp-content/uploads/ folder. That’s where almost all 7 GB lives.
Check host’s policy. Sometimes hosts do keep daily backups, but only for 24 hours—so if you don’t catch the problem fast, they get overwritten.
So, [huxley’s] instinct is right: daily incremental backups are standard in modern setups, but they’re often a paid feature, not included by default.
We used WordPress and BlueHost at threedonia, as described in huxley’s ChatGPT transcript. The information is correct regarding how our WordPress blog was managed.
Rufus: Absolutely. I appreciate your interest.
http://plenumcreaturis.wordpress.com/
huxley:
Thanks! Much appreciated.
However, I know all of that. It is Bluehost that does the backups; it’s WordPress that does the version updates. The updates sometimes affect older blogs. My blog isn’t so old, but supposedly it was affected by the update.
Bluehost is actually pretty good at backups. I used to use Updraft and did some backups a few years ago, but the process was difficult (and perhaps incomplete) because my site is very big. It’s a bit over 20 GBs. That’s why I stopped doing it and left it to Bluehost.
My goal now is either to redo the blog so it doesn’t have an incompatibility problem (that’s where a web developer would come in??), or to figure out an easier and more effective way to back it up, considering how large it is. Bluehost ended up doing okay this time. I really don’t mind losing a few days’ of the blog history, in the scheme of things. But the whole thing has made me very nervous, and I don’t like having to trust Bluehost or WordPress with all my work. I guess I’ll continue to use Updraft now and then, but I have no idea whether it really would be effective in backing up my whole blog. I seem to recall having some glitches when I used it before.
Any suggestions are much appreciated, though.
Thank you, dear Neo, for persisting through this headache. I am so glad your blog is back up. I have noted the address of the alternate site.
liana:
You’re welcome!
Just to make things more complicated, though, I’ve reactivated my older site and might use that one as preferred alternate site. I’ll do a post here in a few days on that, but that URL is neosquared.blogspot.com . It’s got all my old posts up to 2007 – and it’s my original site, slightly redesigned. It used to originally be neo-neocon.blogspot.com, but that’s gone now and now it’s neosquared.blogspot.com and it’s also called “the new neo” rather than “neo-neocon.”
Thanks, Rick67. I just spent about 20 minutes there. Wow! I’ll be back. Maybe one day I’ll even understand some of it.
Just as an FYI, I had no issues whatsoever with the shingles vaccine.
Welcome back. Did you ever think you’d have to learn so much about the inner workings of the internet when you put up your first post?
I’m glad to see you back, and obviously I’m not alone. I found the error messages curious — things like “you’ve tried that too many times” or other non sequiturs. But I understand less about the internet than you do, so I didn’t even try to make sense of it. I did wonder, though, who in Palo Alto (or wherever) comes up with the wording for error messages and other interactions with stupid people. Which obviously includes (in their minds) everyone who does not work in Palo Alto.
Anyway, as with a few other blogs that have withered, I thought I’d just give it time. My patience has been rewarded, thank God, and I even understand a little bit about what happened. Very little, but there it is.
Thank you for keeping us informed. More importantly, thank you for all the effort you put into it.
crasey:
No, I sure didn’t think I’d have to learn that sort of thing. In fact, I didn’t even think I’d still be blogging a month from when I started. It was just a little experiment for me. Little did I know …
F:
You’re welcome!
When I saw “nothing found” in place of all my posts, I broke out into a cold sweat. It was a laconic message, but powerful.
I did wonder, though, who in Palo Alto (or wherever) comes up with the wording for error messages and other interactions with stupid people. Which obviously includes (in their minds) everyone who does not work in Palo Alto.
F:
It might amuse you to know that the original Macintosh alerts for severe errors showed a bomb with a lit fuse and an obscure error id, “DS ####.”
From the documentation one learned that DS stood for Dire Straits. That band was huge at the time and the name fit.
But insiders knew the initials stood for Deep Shit.
(Apple was in Cupertino, close enough to Palo Alto.)
Did you read our comments on the shingles vaccine before they vanished forever? I dare say we could repeat them if they would be useful.
Mary Catelli:
Indeed I did. And they were so mixed that I’m more confused than ever!
I had shingles about ten years ago. It was quite unpleasant. I got a shot for it and some lidocaine patches. It took years for the neuralgia to fade away.
I’m not sure what I should do now.
Personally the help against Alzheimer’s is what makes me really glad I got it.
Dear Neo,
I love your posts so much, I bookmark the entire text.
If you do want to re-insert them into your files somehow, let me know.
I also keep copies of some of the comments that I find interesting.
That’s how I can locate vaguely remembered recommendations for books, movies, shingles remedies, Jello recipes, etc.
But mostly, by the end of the day, the comments have covered most of the essential arguments for and against positions or policies (sometimes more than the professional pundits), and have augmented Neo’s already well-researched and analyzed posts.
NOTE: on the Open Threads I put topic-specific comments in that bookmark, because there is seldom any text to accompany the videos or pictures.
For all others, the comments get their own bookmark.
I do not work for DHS, so you can pay me to erase embarrassing typos. 😉
Open thread 9/5/2025 – The New Neo I’m very bad at this game. I got two correct: > Famous actresses in their youth – can you identify them? > Sharon W on September 5, 2025 at 9:55 am said: I’m surprised I named 10, I recognized 4 more but didn’t count them since I couldn’t name them. A couple I had never seen before. I usually have poor face recognition and mild prosopagnosia that has resulted in embarassing circumstances from time to time. Art Deco on September 5, 2025 at 10:31 am said: Best I can recall, I’ve never heard of nine of these women. Two or three others had names I can recall, but I cannot recall ever seeing them on a program. The only one I recognized from an old picture was Betty White. SHIREHOME on September 5, 2025 at 10:44 am said: I could name 2 also. But a lot of faces were familiar but I could not name them. I did note a lot were born in October, like me. > steve walsh on September 5, 2025 at 10:44 am said: Two for me, Kirstie Alley and Lisa Bonet. There were a few others I recognized but couldn’t name. Like AD, there were many I’ve never heard of before. No surprise then that many of the shows they appeared in are ones I never watched. TommyJay on September 5, 2025 at 11:11 am said: I got 6. There were several who I didn’t know at all. Good job Sharon. miguel cervantes on September 5, 2025 at 11:21 am said: I got about as many, some were very distinctive, Mitchell Strand on September 5, 2025 at 11:34 am said: Wow. Young Marion Ross looks a lot like young Dana Delany. John Galt III on September 5, 2025 at 12:12 pm said: Must admit, I stopped TV in 1971 so had no clue who most these women were. Hope I didn’t miss anything. Avi on September 5, 2025 at 12:15 pm said: I also only got two correct. Perhaps if it had been multiple choice, I might’ve gotten five but 1/3 of the people I never heard of and others. I have a long forgotten. Alan Colbo on September 5, 2025 at 2:03 pm said: Kirstie Alley has that quirky smile that’s easy to recognize. neo on September 5, 2025 at 2:26 pm said: Alan Colbo: My 2 were Kirstie Alley and Angela Lansbury, who both have very distinctive looks. But I realize now that I actually got 3 right, because I recognized Betty White. She looked so much the same that I didn’t count her ? ! physicsguy on September 5, 2025 at 2:38 pm said: LOL…I knew who all but 2 of them were, but zero guesses. With every picture of the younger version, I would go…”yeah, her face is familiar, but I can’t put a name on it.” then the reveal, and I go…”Oh yeah!” Sigh.. AppleBetty on September 5, 2025 at 4:06 pm said: One. Betty White (I’ve got kids. Ask me about Veggie Tales.) Sennacherib on September 5, 2025 at 4:59 pm said: I got less than 2 and I was a fan of some! bof on September 5, 2025 at 5:08 pm said: Zero for 25. Hadn’t heard of half the shows, never mind the actresses. Well, I’ve heard of Jaclyn Smith, Kirstie Alley, Angela Lansbury, and Suzanne Somers. Didn’t watch much TV in the 70s and 80s; my prime TV days were the 50s and early 60s.> Older and Wheezier on September 5, 2025 at 10:07 pm said: After watching, I’m betting that Neo got Angela and Betty. For many of them, I was surprised at how much or how poorly they’ve aged. As for Jaclyn Smith, I was amazed at how stunning she still is. Lee Also on September 6, 2025 at 8:58 am said: I counted the ones I couldn’t name, if I could place them. Like “Mrs. C” or “Cagney from Cagney and Lacy.” I got around 12, I think. I am good at faces, but if I didn’t watch their show, I was never going to guess them.