The Malaysia Blog No One Cared About

My blog was unavailable the past 3-4 days due to a dumb mistake I made unconsciously. Any reader who came to my blog during the time would see the landing page above (click image for larger). It was what I’d call; my BRB page, instead of under construction. And believe me, nothing was under construction. I was busy reinstalling my blog and restoring all my 605 posts.

So why would it take me 3-4 days to restore everything? It takes less than 5 minutes to setup WordPress, right? Well, yes it took me less than 2 minutes to get WordPress up and running. But I spent a half-day figuring out why my imported WordPress WXR backup file wasn’t importing right. Then, I spent more than 2 hours splitting up the backup file (I’ll explain later) in preparation to import. But it gets better.

Later, I spent more than 2 days re-publishing my 600 over posts. In WordPress, that is 40 plus pages of posts to change their Publish Status from Unpublished to Published. Okay, so here’s the why(s).

What was my problem after importing the WordPress WXR backup file?
After uploading a selected file, I noticed my image and anchor sources looked corrupted. It added wp-content/uploads/xxxx/xx/filename.jpg just before actual filename. Initially, someone pointed out to me it could be one of the XML commands which wasn’t close – true enough. But I found out later, it was also caused whenever I used the Import Attachment option; Download and Import file attachments. Weird but true.

Why did I have to split up my WordPress WXR backup file to restore all my posts?
If you’ve clicked on WordPress under Manage > Import, you’ll notice this before the file browser; maximum size: 2MB. My WordPress WXR backup file was over 6MB.

Why did it take me more than 2 days to re-publish all my posts?
“Shouldn’t the posts already be published after importing since they were before?” Trust me, I hear you. It was one of the things I expected the restore to restore. But apparently, the Import isn’t a restore. It’s only an Import function to bring your stuff (posts, categories, tags and authors) into your blog. From this, I discovered the major flaw for post management in WordPress – inability to edit multiple post Publish Status. And, I learned this the hard way.

While my blog was one of Malaysia’s blog no one cared about, Google still loved me and actually indexed my landing page while my blog was down (click image for larger). This was unexpected.

Lastly, during the downtime and restoration of my blog. It got me thinking about a couple of things.

• Create my own WordPress theme for this blog.
• Past entries I’ve posted which I should highlight back.
• Found entries I rounded up what I posted during the week.
• Hope WordPress 2.7 will have a better restoration experience.

Also, I can’t end this without special thanks to the WordPress plugin; Admin Management Extended. It’s temporary AJAX capabilities inflicted on the WordPress post management saved me half the time to be spent publishing the remaining 300 over posts. Thank you!

P.S: So, did anyone really miss me?