Studio Non Troppo

Photo: .Baz

Thanks to a blogger who has done this before and documented his methods, I was able to move the Studio Non Troppo blog to its new host without any major problems. The only apparent casualty has been the plugin I use to upload photos to the blog, which will take some time to troubleshoot, but it looks like all other systems are go. Edit: I just had to change one setting in the ‘Miscellaneous’ panel – the plugin is working fine now.

Of the methods I’ve seen for transferring a Wordpress blog to a new web host, this one was the easiest. The WP-DBManager plugin (written by Lester Chan) did all the heavy lifting. If you’re going to attempt this, make sure you have updated your Wordpress installation and the WP-DBManager plugin to the latest versions.

I’ll write more soon about web hosts and the challenges involved in finding a good one. For now, though, I’ll sign off, reminding you to make your site backups. “Have you saved yet?”

Photo: Don Fulano

First my email went out, and then two of my sites went down (they’re on a single web hosting server).

I sprung in to action. Well, not really.

I have backups of the sites and another email address I can use, but there’s not much to do when a server problem like this happens.

What there is to do:

1. make sure the web hosting company knows there’s a problem (call, email, repeat as necessary)
2. wait
3. fret and stew while waiting, knowing that you really can only do 1. and 2. above

Oh, and #4 could be to start (or continue) researching other web hosting services you could use instead!

I welcome recommendations and horror stories in the comments.

Photo: titanium22

We received a cherry tree via UPS last night. Sue had ordered the tree sometime in the fall for delivery in the spring. It’s a bare root tree and is a self-pollenating dwarf variety. We’re excited to have the tree and are looking forward to seeing it grow and blossom and fruit.

The thing is, we don’t know where we’re going to plant it.

It’s a busy day today, and we’re looking to plant the tree tomorrow (the instructions say we can keep it indoors that long). We don’t really have a “perfect” place to plant it, but there are many places on the property we obviously won’t put it, so at least we’ve narrowed down the possibilities some.

Once we plant it, we won’t want to move it. It’s not as if we could try one spot for a week and then move it to another one; it’s not a houseplant. So picking a spot is a commitment.

We don’t know how big it will actually grow, what shape it will be, or how it will affect the other plants nearby or the ecology of our little plot. We’ll be able to prune it, adjust the watering, and move some of the things around it, but there’s only so much we will be able to adjust or control about the tree’s life.

The most important thing is that we do have to plant it. We can’t wait to find or make a “perfect spot” for it.

So, unlike what I advocated in my post about setting things up to be easily modified, we’ll just be putting it into the ground and seeing what happens. I think nurturing and building, though having creating in common, feel very different.