Where is the Muchness? Part 2

I am sitting here, heartbroken. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to do.

My site went down for two days. I know, in the online world, technical glitches happen. The company that hosts this site, WestNIC as well as almost all my husbands sites, which are his business – his income – reputation, peace of mind…. The hosting company had a server error. I was patient. I waited. This morning, my site went back up. Today is October 19th. The most recent post online was from September 3rd. It was like turning the hands back in time to open the page and see it like a snapshot of history. Still, many of the links were not working and I told myself they were still in the process of restoring the site.

I was wrong.

Elie informed me that he had spoken to a company representative (who was rude to him!!!!) and he was told their server and backups were damaged and the most recent activity that they can restore only until September 3rd. September THIRD! That is a lifetime ago!!! ENTIRE 30 day challenges are gone! GONE!!!!! My new header and design and buttons are GONE! I’ve sent out publicity kits to TV shows and they are going to come look at the site and it is going to appear outdated! I am so upset!!! The company claims there is nothing they can do and they don’t take blame. Elie has ENTIRE SITES he has paid to create and build in the last 8 weeks that have VANISHED. He was running a contest on his main site The TCM Directory (which is thankfully hosted by a different company) and the prize was a fully pre-built website. THE WEBSITE PRIZE NO LONGER EXISTS!!!!! He has clients who rely on him to manage and host their websites- boom. All their info- GONE.

I’m just devastated. Hours and hours- TWO MONTHS of all our work- GONE in a blink.

I just don’t even know what to think.

I mostly want to apologize to the AMAZING women (and AJ 😉 ) who contributed to this site in that time. September was an amazing month on this site and it breaks my heart that it is gone. I… I just….. I just don’t know what else to say.

Thanks for sticking by me. This is TRULY a MAJOR MUCHNESS KILLER.

If you are a contributor to the site, please feel free to post something Muchy. I need a pick me up. … If you signed up to take the challenge, and are in middle of it, you may not be able to log in, as any account created after Sep 3 has vaporized. Please drop me a note and I will re-sign you up.

I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. :’-(

Love & Muchness, Tova


14 Replies to “Where is the Muchness? Part 2”

  1. Heather

    OMG Tova I’m so so sorry. My mom mentioned that she had trouble getting on to read the site and noticed one or two of my “after the challenge posts” missing. I chalked it up to a glitch but came on tonight to check for you since I knew you were out of town. I’m just so so sorry for all the work you did and for the lost challenges. Hopefully people backed their own entries up too so maybe all was not lost.

    Don’t worry about the press kits…it will be alright.

    Hugs.

    Xo h

    Reply
  2. Kelly

    When my day is going crappy, I read your website and it’s an instant pick me up. Whether there are 1 or 1000 posts, the muchness that you provide is amazing! I hope you and Elie are able to build back up your sites without too much stress and I’m sure you will have tons of new people for the muchness challenge 🙂

    Reply
  3. judi

    You know, I started off this week not feeling very muchy at all–my husband was off to the west coast for work and will be there all week, leaving me alone with the kids (7, almost 6 and 7 months). I’m always a little crazy when he’s away, especially at night, triple checking all the doors, and I HATE cooking (a terrible quality in a stay at home mom, I know) and I have my “friend” this week, which adds a bit more crazy to the mix. But you know what? It has not been that bad. the kids have been pretty well behaved and at least one of them has been in bed with me each night (last night two of them) which is as comforting to me as it is them. and that’s pretty muchy to me…

    Reply
  4. Mamma Biscuit

    Oh Tova, I’m so sorry to hear about this! I was wondering what happened to your site as I logged on to read your blog the other day and it was simply unavailable! I assumed that you were probably redesigning elements on your site and thought it was under contruction but never did I think this was going on! I’m really horrified that this has happened to you and to Ellie….and I can totally relate to your frustration! Keeping up a blog takes a lot of hard work (design, photography and content not to mention in your case, managing challengers and their posts) and for a company to not have a back up of their back up is unacceptable! I’m not sure what your work style is regarding your blog but for me, I archive every single post (including all retouched photos and intellectaul content) on my computer system as I go (I then create DVD’s of my entire posts twice, one for home and one for at work). Everything is dated according to post and all design elements are saved as well. From this point on, I would suggest working this way (if you haven’t been already) so that you can at least repost what you may lose if this happens again up on your site! Also, I’m not sure how your challengers are working to create their posts but I would hope that they would save the digital files and not work directly within the blog program but rather in Word and simply copy and post the text when creating a new post (if they are not working that way, I would recommend they do, afterall, they risk losing their intellectual property that they share on your site too) I hope all of this helps and you can at least restore some of your posts and interface changes and more importantly, your sanity!

    Mamma Biscuit and the Biscuits are sending you pug hugs right now!
    xoxo

    Reply
    • Tova Post author

      Thanks mamma for the love.
      I’m not as smart as you. ;-P I always seem to have to learn the hard way. So many of my posts are on the fly- from my phone… I don’t create them anywhere except the WP form… and I thought it backed up reliably… because they DO back up weekly and offsite monthly…. but they said BOTH systems failed…. or they are lying…. but either way, the content is ultimately gone.
      I have been able to get some of it through google cache pages…. but without the pics….
      I am hoping to recreate my favorite posts and going to send my challengers their content to recreate if they would like to. really disheartening. Mostly because of the challengers who shared their hearts here. I feel like I let them down.
      But- as Vadim said- Like a great pheonix, the MUCHNESS will rise again!!! Small setbacks are just ways to creatively problem solve!!!

      Reply
  5. Jen

    Tova, I can’t believe this!!! That company is really stupid!!!! The muchness is the best. And nothing can make it any less than the best (not even something like this!) Every morning I start out my day with a jolt of muchness by checking out the site. But, I have to say, I’ve been so influenced by it, I’ve been still feeling muchy (even w/out it). Maybe this is the time to do something else or something bold. You are fierce and will do something wonderful and muchy as a result of this really frustrating issue! Hang in there! hugs!

    Reply

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