Hey, Everyone!
Those of you who follow me on social media already know more-or-less what I’m about to say…
Last week, I found out that the hosting service I had been using was going out of business. This required me to switch my sites — LittleZotz.com and LaurenTharp.net — over to a new host.
That shouldn’t have been a problem. But it was.
Both of my sites were down for several days. And then, when they came back, they were a mess.
LaurenTharp.net, my personal site, was completely wrecked. Tabula rasa. I have to start over. I’m deeply saddened because I had recorded a lot of important life events on that site — from coming clean about my mental health issues, to sharing how I stopped self-mutilating, to sharing the pure joy of spending time with friends, family, and classrooms full of young writers-to-be. But I’m trying to remain optimistic that the new LaurenTharp.net will be better than ever.
LittleZotz Writing — this site! — was sort of salvaged.
I had been making back-ups, but I guess I didn’t do it right because out of over 200 blog posts, only 70 of them survived. And, of those 70, only five were finished drafts. Eep.
My writing samples are gone, my FAQ page is gone, my Video Answers are gone… Nearly all of my pages: Gone. (If you click on the tabs in the navigation bar, you’ll be led to blank pages).
So here’s what’s going to happen:
LittleZotz Writing is a multiple award-winning blog and I will not let it die.
Over the coming weeks, I’m going to do what I can to make LittleZotz Writing just as good — if not better — than it was before.
This is going to take time. (But hopefully not too much time!).
There are a few things that need to happen:
- I need to rummage through my external harddrives and find the missing 130 blog posts.
- I need to go through 195 blog posts, put them in the backend, add illustrations, and — in come cases — refinish/rewrite them.
- I have to try to figure out when the posts were originally written.
- I need to rewrite all of the missing pages (Writing Services, Writing Samples, F.A.Q, etc.)
- I need to install all the missing plugins (like Foobar, Social Wiggle, Magic Action Box, etc.)
- I need to keep my chin up.
It’s going to be difficult to do all that and work for clients; however, I have faith that I can get it done by the start of 2016. Please, be patient, and understand that my site is going to look strange in the coming weeks as I reorganize.
New blog posts will continue to go up on schedule even as old posts are being salvaged. There will be no halt to the regular update schedule.
And, if you loved the posts I wrote this year, and want to show continued support for LittleZotz Writing, I would appreciate it if you nominated LittleZotz.com as one of your favorite blogs for writers over on The Write Life: http://thewritelife.com/favorite-writing-websites-2016/ (And you don’t have to just vote for me — you can nominate as many blogs as you like with a single comment!).
And starting January 7, 2016, I’m going to be hosting a podcast on LittleZotz Writing in addition to writing blog posts. You can listen to the theme song — by the wonderfully talented SIKORA — here: https://littlezotz.com/2015/12/lzp-episode-0/
Good things are coming!
Thanks for being patient in the meantime.
Until next time,
Lauren*
UPDATE (12/21/15)
Hey again!
These pages are working again:
- About
- Free E-books
- LittleZotz Writing Affiliates
- Need a Freelance Writer?
- One-on-One Mentoring
- Group Mentoring
- F.A.Q. (Now featuring more cat pics!)
- Writing Services
- Writing Samples (I had to change this a lot, but I’m hoping the new format is better…)
- Testimonials (Still needs everyone’s pictures, but is otherwise “good to go”)
- Contact
- Free Consultation
These pages are new:
- Upcoming Events (Now you can see when the next LZW post goes up and where else I am online and off)
- LittleZotz Podcasting (The first episode airs on 1/7/16, but you can listen to the theme song HERE in the meantime)
These pages are gone and (probably) not coming back:
- Video Answers (Very few people watched my videos and they were a pain to film, upload, and transcribe anyway. You can still watch the old videos on my YouTube channel if you really want to.)
- The secret pages I set up for schools (I can now refer schools to LittleZotz Teens instead)
“So what’s going on with the blog…?”
That’s the question I’ve been getting most often! And here’s the dealio:
Everything pre-2013 is gone. You can see some of the super old (2010-2012) posts in LittleZotz Writing: Adventures in Freelancing. But the rest aren’t coming back.
Posts that were written from 2013-2015 are slowly being uploaded. I’ve been making it a point to upload a few of the “classic” posts each week. It’s going to take a while though because there are a lot of posts and all of them need to be reformatted and have their illustrations inserted.
Brand new posts are going up on schedule. Every other Wednesday, there’s a brand new LZW blog post. So keep coming back for fresh content as well as old favorites! 🙂
That’s all for now!
–L*
Lauren Spear (née Tharp) is the owner and creator of the multiple award-winning LittleZotz Writing. She’s written hundreds of bylined posts helping freelance writers to become BETTER freelance writers. Thousands if you count all the articles she’s ghostwritten (but she’s not allowed to talk about most of those).
Ugghhh, that sucks! I thought I was going to lose my site a few weeks ago, but thankfully it turned out okay. I have now backed everything up though! Horrible experience. Good luck (and badass determination!) getting everything back how it was. If it helps, my People I Know interview was published on 13 July 2015, and I still have the original email if you want me to send it over again 🙂
That IS helpful, actually. Thanks, Karen! 🙂
Also, I voted for Untamed Writing on The Write Life: http://thewritelife.com/favorite-writing-websites-2016/#comment-422304
Oh no! That sounds like a mess. At least that’s a lesson to me to back up all my blog posts. I always think, “Well, it’s saved on my site, so I can delete this article/image from my computer.” Apparently not the case!
I hope it all works out for you.
Yes! Learn from my mistakes! :O
Oh now, I can’t imagine how big of a headache that must be! 🙁 Hope you manage to get at least most of your content back.
BTW, in case you haven’t already tried using it: the Wayback Machine (http://archive.org/web/) may have some of your content saved.
As of now, I have everything from 2013 onward… I just need to add in the illustrations and format the text. 🙂
I tried using the Wayback Machine, but it only had the summaries, not the posts. :'( Oh well. Maybe it’s for the best! My friend Karen joked that she wished that she could have some of her original posts wiped from the web haha.
Lauren, you should also consider reissuing the old posts as new ones over the coming months. Many of your newer readers won’t have read the older posts, and, unless you can perfectly recreate the old URL, you will likely have lost most of the Google juice going to the old posts.
Ooooooh… From a marketing standpoint, I know that what you’re saying is a great idea (and even Copyblogger recommends it! http://www.copyblogger.com/how-to-republish-content/), but from a Lauren standpoint it feels like cheating. lol.
I actually do know the old URLs for my pieces though, so hopefully I’ll maintain my “Google juice.” 🙂