Updating this Site – May 2020
May 14, 2020: Most issues resolved. I am leaving this post below as a reminder to myself about what could go wrong.
For the past few days, updating this site caused a lot of issues. Long story short, I goof’d up.
In my endeavour to optimize my writing, I did the following at the same time: merged two sites, changed the Content Management System, moved from shared hosting to a VPS, and also moved the Content Delivery Networks or CDNs. It was a disaster waiting to happen, and it did.
Here is the summary:
This website moved from old home to a new home. But I forgot to update the new address or leave behind a forwarding address. So, any new visitor could not come and visit this site.
Issues with updating the site
First of all, the migration from Bludit CMS to WordPress did not go as planned. Some images did not get transferred, or the links are pointing to a dead end.
Next, there was a problem with the domain itself. The DNS entries were updated both at the previous host (smallweb.net) and our domain registrar (rorarii.com). But, there was some issue with the DNS entries getting updated. This meant that links on this site were broken.
Why did it matter?
While the pages loaded, images gave a series of errors.
This chaos was painful for you, the visitors, painful for me, and I might have earned several penalties from google.
What is the way forward?
By this weekend, we should be back on course. Apologies for all the inconvenience caused.
- Till last week, this site (blog.amarvyas.in) was hosted on Host A, and a different content management system or CMS (Bludit).
- The registrar for my site is Rorarii. The Domain Name (DNS ) settings, which are still with my current registrar, were left untouched.
- Last week, I decided to do the following:
i. Move this site from Bludit to WordPress
ii. Migrate from shared hosting to a Virtual Private Server (VPS). This site had been picking up traffic and I thought of moving some other content here. This would partly solve the problem of plenty I have mentioned earlier in this blog.- When I changed the ip of the primary site to that of the VPS with my registrar, somehow the change did not happen. AS a result, when one would type in the address blog.amarvyas.in (or click on the link to any of the blog posts), they would be redirected to the original sit the old ip address. This happened for four days in a row.
- I contacted my registrar and they checked on their end. Turns out I was experiencing a different issue with them- maybe related to this matter. But when I checked the whois information for this site, it showed the right information.
As a temporary solution,- I had to create a dummy domain on the previous host, and a subdomain on a different server. Next, I had to forward all links to a temporary subdomain as a result.
- Finally, on May 8th morning IST, the issue got resolved.
This post was updated on 2020-05-06
Behind the scene updates
I don’t want to make a habit of posting frequent updates about this website on this particular page.The idea mainly was to highlight the major changes that have happened. First, is that most of the images are loading properly. For most of the blog posts, I went through this difficult exercise of going through nearly 200 blog posts from the past and updating the content, fixing formatting and images. This task is not complete yet. And let me tell you, working on that project was a disaster and full of frustration. Or a past eight years, this website has probably seen a few domains and subdomains. Content was getting imported from variety of sources, some of the sources are not operational anymore. That is precisely what was visible everywhere. Anyway, most of it is behind us. Hopefully we will have a cleaner, faster web experience now. Some of the smaller changes that you would start to see: I have added Google Analytics. Very soon I would be also adding the news letter subscription module. I believe with the amount of content that is getting generated, at some point in time, there may be a few of you who may want to subscribe to this newsletter.
February 2022
This blog is on a separate subdomain, content has been (mostly) migrated from amarvyas.in to blog.amarvyas.in
January 2022
This blog is on a separate subdomain.
Theme changed to Neve Pro (child) from Hemingway by Anders Noren.
September 17, 2021
After a brief flirting around with WordPress multi-site, I have gone back to single site- while retaining the same structure for links (Cannot get penalized for SEO again!) Changed the theme to Neve.
Note: we have extended term license for Neve theme, Generatepress on the other hand is an annual subscription. With tighter clampdowns from RBI and also in ability than renewing subscriptions.
September 12, 2021
Had an outage over the weekend: triggering a new structure for the site. Read about it here
September 5, 2021
Changed the theme for this blog, updated link structure
July 14, 2021
I have changed the theme to GeneratePress, which I hope to retain for some time to come.
July 13, 2021
New “skin” added to GeneratePress
July 10, 2021 Beta site moved to new look and feel. URL Structure changed.
Mar 21, 2021 New home for this blog and Podcast update
Greetings! After a long spree of blogs in January and February this year, the past several weeks have been “dry”, figuratively speaking. Literally not a single post was published.
Earlier this week, I decided to change that. Starting with a new server location. The old location (PHP Friends, Frankfurt) was awesome, and a great service. But I have been consolidating services, and thanks for COVID-19, this also means downsizing my VPS “empire” (more on that later).
Also thought I would mention that my podcast- Startup Nibbles is getting revived shortly. Looking forward to sharing stories about startups in this twice weekly show!
January 16, 2021
Giving a new look to this website
In first week of January, I decided to change the theme and add some new features to this blog and website. From Hestia Pro, the theme first changed to GeneratePress, then Neve Pro. The very next week, I reversed the changes and went back to Hestia Pro. Read to learn why.
Update Jan 24, 2021
I have changed the theme to GeneratePress, and customized a pre-built template. The journey was not without hitches: the stock GeneratePress theme install gave the site a 1990s look (retro is cool, but not always!)
July 20, 2020
Website Updates: Failed Backup and using Updraft Plus
Today (July 20th, 2020) many of you might have experienced issues while visiting this website. Turns out the database for WordPress had got corrupted, and therefore I had to move this site to a new server. Unfortunately, the first two times, the plugin I use for backup (All In One WordPress Backup) kept giving errors.
Fortunately, Plan B kicked in … and things are back as normal. And I learnt how to use Updraft Plus!
January 2021
Earlier this month, I had published a post about my decision to change the theme for this site in order to give a new look and feel for the New Year. I literally went down a rabbit hole, and tried a variety of themes. You and read more about that journey in this post. Below, you will find more about my decision to settle for the GeneratePress theme.