Blog fixed via Upgrade

Just wanted to let everyone know why the blog looks like crap right now. Or rather why do you see the ultra spartan Kubrick theme instead of the bastardized, orange version you are used to.

Last night my blog broke for some unspeakable reason. I was unable to post or edit posts – each time I would hit the “Save” or “Publish” button I would be redirected to my homepage without any changes being saved. Just like that.

I spent whole Sunday ripping my hair out, cursing, banging my head against the wall and tweaking every possible setting on the blog I could think of. I disabled and enabled cache and anti-spam plugins. I upgraded the PHP version on the server. I tried disabling mod_security as per this thread which was describing eerily similar issue. I edited and re-edited my .htaccess files about a million times.

The only thing I didn’t actually do was to update WordPress… Cause you know – that’s just crazy talk. As my last resort I contacted Dreamhost support, but since it was Sunday they only got back to me today. Do you know what they said?

“We’d love to help ya but you must upgrade your wordpress first cause your version is way old.”

I’m paraphrasing here – the support guy was actually much more courteous and used expressions like “I’m very sorry to hear about your problem” and “I will be happy to help you” but that line above was pretty much the gist of the email.

At that point I got pissed off and did something reckless. I logged into my CPanel and clicked on the big button that said “Upgrade Your WordPress, Stupid!”. That thing has been taunting me for the longest time but I never had the guts or inclination to click it. I’m one of those… What do they call them… What is the polar opposite of an early adopter? And no, it’s not late adopter. I’m like the anti-adopter.

I run obsolete software and hardware until it breaks. I’m a firm believer in the old adage “if it ain’t broke, don’t fucking touch it less you want to spent the next 6 hours fixing it”. But since my blog just broke I felt compelled to press that button. That was reckless and stupid, mind you cause I happened to be running WordPress 2.0.5.

Yeah, shut up – I’m that bad. I’m gonna turn in my geek badge at the end of the day. The thing is, when you upgrade from that far back, things are bound to get broken. I know this from experience – I’ve seen many broken upgrades in my day. That’s probably why I’m deathly scared of them. But I was desperate, pissed off and I felt reckless. So I pressed the button.

Lo and behold – the blog fixed itself, and without any major fuckups. At least none that I can see right now. I mean, you can read it and I can post again so that means we are back in business. The custom theme went to hell during the upgrade, but I have it backed up so I can easily restore it later today or tomorrow. The important thing is that the damn thing did not break into million pieces like I expected – which is great.

So that’s why the blog looks like shit today. But look at the bright side – until I fix the theme you get an add free Terminally Incoherent experience for the day. Or at least those of you who are not running adblock.

Anyways, I’m happy and relieved and I can go back to writing ridiculously long, and badly spelled posts for your enjoyment. Oh and WordPress 2.7 is kinda spiffy. My only problem is that I can’t find anything now. But I’ll get used to it. :)