I went to bed with my FTP client slowly deleting the old files for Drupal so I could upload the new ones, and that was exactly what I did when I got up in the morning. However, with nearly 18K files, there was no way the upload was going to complete before I needed to head out to work and I didn’t want to interrupt the upload process while I was in transit. (Remember this.) I left my machine to do its work while I went to do mine, and you know how that went from the previous WIP Update. Well, when I got back home, I found that the connection to the FTP server had timed out and the client was still stubbornly trying to ram files through without success. As I’ve only ever done small-scale uploads until now, I didn’t quite handle things as efficiently as I could’ve, but that doesn’t change the fact that my FTP connection is only good for about 6K files.

I spent the evening doing iteration after iteration trying to get those dang files across. While I was doing that, I was seriously looking into alternatives to Drupal. Joomla strikes me as too similar to WordPress, which is fine for the blog but not really suited for what I want to do with the main site. Concrete5 had some recommendations, but as I was testing a demo, I remembered doing so before and not liking it then either. Also, like Drupal, it has a nasty habit of making changes to the source code you input, only it does things that the current HTML rules don’t like, and I really don’t need that. At the cost of having the basic framework designed for me, I was looking into something that wasn’t WYSIWYG, which led me to CMS Made Simple. It’s a lot closer to what I want, even if it’d take more work to develop the skeleton of the site myself. I vowed that if the upload failed again, I was hopping ship. However, after something like the eighth or ninth try, I finally got all the files uploaded and everything was functional again. The only thing really holding me back is the fact that Drupal is already optimized for mobile, which would’ve taken a fair bit of effort for me to design myself. Also, I learned a lot from the repeated failures in the update process, so I feel it will go a lot smoother next time.

During the FTP shenanigans, I was doing offline prep work, so I’m ready to go all in reconstructing the site content. While there’s some appeal of using my free time in the office for writing, I really need to focus on getting the site back in order. And with that, the work begins anew. Stay tuned.

You didn’t expect to see one of these, did you? I wouldn’t have either, but as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I’ve had a burst of inspiration recently while proctoring finals and I’ve figured out my plan for the next four chapters of TWH. As all my proctoring and grading are done and I was left with two more days in the workweek, I considered bringing my laptop to the office so I could continue my work on the site. However, due to the time required for the file transfers for updating Drupal, I opted to leave my laptop behind to finish that while I was off at work. (You’ll hear more about that in my next Road to Reconstruction post.) So, instead of reconstructing pages on the site, I used my time to write on Chapter 19 of TWH. A different sort of productive use of my time, but a welcome one. It may be a little too optimistic, but if there are no other major disturbances in the near future, I might even be ready for a story update by next weekend. That’d be nice, wouldn’t it? Well, let’s see what I can do. Stay tuned.

With the accessibility issues sorted out, I could return to my work without any hindrance. I continued to flesh out the “James” section in preparation for the main content. Of course things had to be going too smoothly for me because as the evening’s winding down, I get a notice that a new version of Drupal’s out and I need to update. Now, we can’t have it be a simple single click to update like in WordPress. Oh, heavens me, no. You’ve got to strip out a decent chunk of your files, then upload the new ones. I have the distinct feeling it would’ve been faster to delete the old files in CPanel’s File Manager rather than my FTP client, but I did the latter and so that was going to take the rest of the night. Joy.

One of my concerns is that the htaccess file was set to resolve the issues of the past couple days and now I have to replace it. I of course saved a copy of the old version, but I need to go through the code and see what’s changed with the new version so I don’t screw up anything there. Hopefully I can get it all working without too much trouble as Drupal seems to update rather regularly. It may not have been great for security, but I liked having gone all those years with Wolf CMS without updating anything. Well, such is the price we pay to stay on the cutting edge. If there aren’t any major issues getting things up and running again, I should be able to resume work without too many headaches. Will it work out that well? If recent history is any indication, no, but I’d welcome a pleasant surprise for a change. Stay tuned.

Without access to Drupal, I worked on reconstructing and converting offline copies of the site’s code. After posting the previous entry of this series, I got to thinking about the solution proposed by tech support yesterday. I wasn’t sure if they were going to do it or if they expected me to do it, so I decided I might as well try it myself. I set subdomains for the blog and the wiki, then the redirects, and while I regained access to the wiki, I lost access to WordPress. Well, fudge. I contacted tech support again, and though it took at least two hours if not closer to three, when it was all said and done, I had full access to Drupal, WordPress and PMWiki. Huzzah.

From there, I went about putting together the skeleton for the “James” section of the site and now need to go forward with the content. I intend to restore story content first and then the reviews. This will be a hefty undertaking, but once it’s done, I can work on the appearance of the site to get it more to my liking. Expect the next few days to be little more than just updates on content restoration. That’s all I’ve got for the time being. Stay tuned.

The first thing I did was makes some tweaks to the Update Archive that I had on my mind at the close of business yesterday. One thing I’ve decided to do was rebrand the Five Arcs as the Six Arcs as there’s now more than enough reason to elevate the Else Arc to the same level as the other five. I was updating the internal links and setting up a redirect so any legacy links won’t be broken. Before getting into the core section of the site, I wanted to chronicle the previous day’s activity, only to get a 403 error when I tried to log in to WordPress. Now, I’d had a similar issue with the wiki the day before, but the problem didn’t affect the blog… until it did. I went through the solutions I could find before finally deciding to contact HostGator for help. They restored access to the blog at the cost of access to the main site. The proposed solution was to set up a subdomain to avoid further disputes over permissions between Drupal and WordPress (and theoretically PMWiki as well). There’s supposed to be a followup, but I’m not sure if I’m expected to do any of it myself.

My motivation level dipped quite a bit after dealing with all that, so I took a nap after supper and when I got up, I started working on rounding out the offline backup with the updated code. That alone can keep me busy a good long while and it was enough to occupy me for the rest of the evening. Between archived versions of the pages via the Wayback Machine and the original database, I was filling in the gaps in my offline archive. Once I have access to the main site again, I can start plugging in the content for the pages. The current situation gives me the opportunity to make more changes to the site than I might otherwise. Once it’s all done, we can welcome Palidor Media 3.0. How long ago was it that I unveiled the 2.0 version of the site? It’s been ages, hasn’t it?

Well, anyway, depending on accessibility, I may just be doing offline work for the foreseeable future. In a bit of good news, I managed to get through my writer’s block on TWH, so whenever I want a break from my work on the code, I could actually get some writing done. Stay tuned.

I continued my work on reconstituting the Update Archive. I was able to significantly improve my efficiency when it came to swapping out the old code for the new. I was able to complete the long journey to 2024, but as I was running out of time, I realized there were some other tweaks I needed to make to the files. Better to get it knocked out know when the list is still short. (Yes, I can search for specific pages, but I did like Wolf’s folder structure for keeping everything organized.)

When it comes to the look of the site, I’m having a real uphill battle trying to override the default CSS. It’s just something I’m going to have to hammer away at until I get it fixed. The current settings for blockquotes are really obnoxious and I need my div classes to format text the way I want. (I refuse to rely on the WYSIWYG text editor. The code those things produce is just so daggone ugly.)

For now, I want to focus on the grunt work of creating all the files and then I can focus on making it all look the way I want. As this is finals week, we don’t have to pull full days, so that means more time to focus on getting the site back up in working shape. Stay tuned.

So, yesterday I thought I’d fool around a bit with a new CMS. Little did I realize that this was an all-in deal. After hours of fighting with the system just to get a handle on basic functionality, I then had to deal with the grim reality that I wouldn’t simply be able to import the pages from my old database, which means that I have to reconstitute the whole site, all seventeen years and 3000+ pages of it. Oh, what fun.

I’d been meaning to modernize my code anyway and also make the site friendlier to mobile users, so this had to happen. I really did like Wolf CMS, but I probably shouldn’t have put off upgrading so long after the developers closed up shop. I suppose now, during the lull between school years is the best time for it.

My first step on the road to reconstruction is the Update Archive. Once that’s set, I have a reference point for the site’s content and can continue to rebuild from there. Though I have a fairly extensive offline backup, there are some gaps, but I still have the old database to dig into if needs be, and failing that, I should be able to grab content via the Wayback Machine. It’s going to be a long process, but it’s not like I’m doing everything from scratch. It could definitely be a whole lot worse.

I’ll be chronicling the recovery efforts here. Don’t expect much in the way of story progress until I’ve got everything in a serviceable form. Stay tuned.

I did a little proofing on Tico1. Not much because there was something about a graduation ceremony that folks were making a big deal about. I would later go on to implement the edits to JJ2 and TWH. I’ll work on the Space Arc stuff I’ve done tomorrow. Not exactly thrilling content, I know, but maybe I’ll do a little actual writing as well. Stay tuned.

I continued to proof Tico1. I’m enjoying immersing myself in the story again. One thing I’m noticing, though, is that my writing for dialect has become more refined since I wrote this, so reworking that to make it more consistent is going to be a bit of work. (And I can remember going back over the manuscript a several years back as well, but such are the joys of the iterative process.)

In other news, it’s been brought to my attention that the version of PHP the site’s been using is well out of date. When I tried to update it, the site stopped loading, which means that I’m going to have to migrate to a new CMS. That’ll be quite the undertaking I’m sure. I knew support ended for my current CMS years back, but I figured so long as everything was functioning, why change? Well, we’re reaching the point where that’s no longer the case. Currently I’m looking into using Drupal. It’s supposed to have a bit of a steep learning curve to it, but apparently it has some built-in functionality for adapting to mobile browsers, and that’s something I’ve been meaning to do for the site for a while now. I know it won’t be as simple as plugging in my current database, so I’ll have to roll my sleeves up and have at it. This will go well with my intentions of modernizing my code and doing some other tweaks to design. Fun, fun, fun. Stay tuned.

I finished going over TWH and at least managed to work out a general game plan going forward (albeit with no actual story progress), then I went through proofing the Space Arc shorts and went on to Tico1. While story progress on TWH would be ideal, I am at least doing something productive. At the rate I’m going, we probably won’t have a story update this week and I’ll just move on to EM3 next week. I’d like to have something more interesting to report, but expect more of the same for the time being. Stay tuned.