I had a harrowing time during my website downtime which took me by complete surprise. I was trying to understand the issue which was causing the problem and following up with the tech support team was nothing short of a nightmare. Here’s what I learned from my experience.
I wrote about my experience during the server downtime. It seems like a lot of time has passed and I have aged faster. But thank god, it’s just been three days, although the server issues don’t seem likely to be ending anytime soon. Hours after I wrote a long post on yesterday, the website went down again. Honestly, I had reached the end of my daily quota of patience and I wasn’t sure what support was the technical staff at Bluehost offering me. Last night, a scan was initiated and a malware infection was discovered on the server. A load of malicious .php files were scrupulously dumped in different folders on my site and I was tasked with deleting the garbage. To make the matters worse, the agents had duplicated the root folder so there were duplicates of the infected files that I had to remove. Bravo!
The site went down in less than 4 hours of cleaning the server of the malware infection, then rescanning it for any infected files — I’m still not told how the files got infected though I would see myself just staring at a white browser screen with every refresh. So instead of getting on the live chat and cutting corners, I spent the next hour on the phone speaking with the technical support. He found some plugins that were interfering with the functioning of the site. I had heard that statement so many times in the past 24 hours, but he deactivated the entire list of plugins, that resulted in my site going down again and the white screen reappeared. Then he brought the site up through writing some code in the .htaccess file but I could only see the textual content, not the beautiful theme that I had painstakingly worked on for the past many years. He advised me to activate one plugin at a time and check the website to see if it comes online, to find out the irksome plugin. That exercise took me another hour, in between all the other stuff that I had to complete before the day ended. With the instigating piece of code out of the way the site went up but only the textual version.
I went on the live chat again with the tech-support. This time my site was up and I wanted the theme back, and trust me, I was completely spent by now. I don’t know why but the agents had reinstalled WordPress, just too many times. I later found copies of older versions of zipped WordPress installation files in the File Manager suggesting, the tech support team had tried every trick in the manual to bring the site up. It was closer to midnight, yesterday when the website came up finally after a gruelling ordeal which lasted 3 days! Importantly, the website was online overnight, this hasn’t happened in more than 3 days and that was good news.
There are some positive lessons I learned from this morbid experience which I wanted to document.
Use Localized Themes
Third-party themes come with a shelf-life and one should use them with caution. The free theme that I was using, ‘Fixed’, was designed and produced by Array Themes which had a fantastic UI framework. They had some of the best themes and I had used another one of their designs earlier (‘Editor’). Coming back, Array Themes was bought by WP Engine and they stopped access to their array of themes, which meant, there would no longer be any updates available for customers like me. Themes always played a crucial role in WordPress and the code could interfere with its normal functioning. So from here on, I’d rather use the default theme or a customised theme that adheres to my design framework and one where I’m assured of regular updates for some time.
Ensuring that the themes in use are regularly updated and support the design framework we agree upon. It’s also critical that it syncs with the regular WordPress upgrades as well. Eventually, I have settled for the default ‘Twenty Fifteen’ for now. I like clean, minimal themes and ‘Twenty Fifteen’ hands me that flavour. I think it lends a perfect balance between design, aesthetics and programming.
Reduce Dependence On Plugins
Plugins are the favourites of non-technical augment the functioning of the site, but some of them also pile up the code on the .htaccess file which might result in complete mayhem. I experienced this first-hand during my site downtime, with one of the plugins for SEO interfering with the functioning of the website and I am not even using many plugins. I had to deactivate it along with some other plugins.
The more plugins we use, the harder it gets to keep track of them in a complicated scenario to see what’s causing an interference with the website’s downtime, and if you’re a non-programmer troubleshooting could be messy. I’d suggest using fewer plugins and exercising diligence before and after the installation. Choose the ones which are regularly updated if you want to avoid security loopholes.
Supporting The Tech-Support
Before I faced the WordPress meltdown I always held tech-support high above everyone else in solving technical issues. That reality though was completely misplaced. Since this issue cropped up I have learned that tech-support agents are not super human-beings and they are just as hard-pressed for time and knowledge as we are. So expecting prompt service at 100% accuracy is going to be much difficult, if not impossible. For instance, I found that one of the agents was researching my problem on the Internet as I was holding the other side of the line, just as I would be doing.
It was a harrowing time talking to agent after an agent at Bluehost in getting to the bottom of the downtime issue. While I had many moments of heated debates & arguments it taught me a valuable lesson — about empathising with the support team. They cater to several customers on chat at the same time. It’s best to maintain your temper and have patience if you want answers to questions.
Find A Balance Between Content Vs Design
It took a distressing event like this for me to realize the difference between Content (blogging) and Design (the blog/aesthetics). Good design makes the experience of blogging memorable, in terms of writing and reading, however, it cannot be a face-saver if you continuously publish bad content. In short, if you’re serious about blogging don’t just stop at a well-designed theme and leave, but take the effort to churn out good content regularly, anything that’s interesting to you and to your audience!
As a designer, I analyze a theme for a combination of navigation, information architecture, minimalism and finally, the ability for customization. It’s nearly impossible to hit all the check marks but it’s interesting to delve deeper into the tradeoffs on offer. It’s also harder to think about good content regularly. I once designed a theme for my WordPress website back in 2010.
In conclusion, I’d reiterate the need to take regular backups, both on the server-end (using WordPress Tools) and on your HD. The more copies the better since absolutely nothing can be considered as ‘safe’ these days from crashes or hacking, as well as, investing in good malware protection software on the server isn’t a bad idea too. Overall, this experience was a wakeup call of a different kind, it has compelled me to develop a 360º perspective towards my entire blogging experience.
