This was not the blog post I intended to write.
I’m sure I was going to wax on poetically about something interesting, but we’ll have to save that for another day.
You see, today I experienced an epic technology fail. Perhaps not epic to you. But it sure rocked my world.
I decided that I would ‘tinker’ (I can hear you laughing) with my site and try out a few functions so that I wouldn’t have to continually bug my web/graphic designer. I wasn’t worried – I’m not a WordPress newbie and I thought that what I was tinkering with was pretty straightforward.
Ya, not so much.
Instead, I pressed just a few buttons and within minutes my site when from perfect to perfectly unreadable. The font was tiny, the layout was gone and it was 11:30pm. Sh*t!
I put a mayday call out on Twitter and got some instant support from various people including @owengreaves @grantgriffiths @TMarieHilton @AmySeyBrown @Sffarlenn_net. Thank you! But no success. Sent a panicked email to my favourite web person @paintermommy and went to sleep hoping that when I woke up it would all be fixed (hey, she’s 2 hours ahead of me).
Ya, not so much.
Instead I got an email back saying, “Wow – what did you do?” LOL. Not a good sign.
So, rather than bore you with the details, I spent most of my day going back and forth with various people offering to help. I must say, I was truly touched by how many people really went out of their way to offer me advice, ideas, words of encouragement and a little WP know-how.
Bottom line? My site is still not fixed but it’s readable now and it looks just fine. (The big fix is in the works and should be done by next week)
So, what did this oh so fun experience teach me? And what can it teach you?
- Shit happens: Just when you think you’ve got your stuff together, something happens to just mess it up. Doesn’t matter if you’re just starting out, or going pro. Expect it, learn from it and move on.
- Ask for help: It’s easy to stay spinning when something goes wrong and run around trying to pick up all the pieces yourself. Don’t. Ask for help – immediately. People love to be of service. Just make sure you say thanks.
- Back-up your stuff: No excuses – if you’ve backed up your work you’ll feel much better when ‘fit hits the shan’.
- Double check your back-up: I learned the hard way today that while my WP site was being backed up regularly, it was going to an incorrect (and non-existent) email address.
- Don’t try this at home: Here’s a lesson in playing to your strengths. If there’s something you’re not great at – leave it for the people who are. Focus on your strengths rather than spending 12 hours fixing a problem you had no business creating.
And perhaps the most important lesson is that it doesn’t really matter in the big scheme of things. Yes, it sucks royally to have technology work against you rather than for you. But as my good friend @JenPowter says, “The person is always more important than the problem.” I translate that to mean that I can either stay stressed about it, or trust that my site will be fixed and life will go on.
But it’s the last time I’ll ever tinker.
And Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends!
