Welcome to UptonArt.net

And we’re back!

posted February 28th, 2013 in Site News

I seem to have gotten everything back up and running. I feel like a blog post or two might be missing, depending on how recent a backup they were able to pull for me from the old host, but most of the stuff seems to be there. (What would be more interesting is to try to figure out what CDs I have purchased and had added to the database that might not be there… so far I only notice one.)

For anybody who missed the “in recovery mode” bit, my old web host (who I had threatened on multiple occasions to leave, had inertia not been so strong) crashed and was running in “fail-safe” mode. The options presented to us were to file a ticket asking for our account to be recreated on the new server, at which point we could recreate any databases and they would then port them over, or we could cancel our account. I was able to get a raw dump of the database from what they had on backups, but that form was of…debatable use on the new host. (Actually, I think they could’ve deployed it without too much pain, but whatever.) So I installed MySQL myself on a virtual machine, imported the raw tables, dumped them to a standard text sqldump, and imported them here… and once I got a few silly things about DB connection worked out, everything seems to mostly be in order again.

So, after I figure out my CD list, I guess it’s back to deciding whether I want to finally do a new design…

On Spam

posted November 6th, 2012 in Site News

It’s a shame the amount of spam comments I get isn’t actually proportional (in a positive way) the number of actual comments I get…or the number of readers… After I dropped a link to my blog on another musician’s blog, I’ve started getting three or four new spam messages a day.

A few authorly shout-outs

posted June 27th, 2011 in Friends,Site News,Writing

Some visitors may know that at some point, I’d like to write a novel. Especially since I’ve crossed “record and sell at least one CD” off of my to-do list. (Maybe I should’ve set the bar a little higher, but this was before just anybody could release a record on Bandcamp.) I’d started a few times in high school but never quite finished. Maybe I’ll finally get to do National Novel Writing Month this year, finally, and get a little closer.

But it turns out several of my friends are aspiring authors as well and write blogs, either about the writing process or as an entertaining aside to their main writings. So, here’s a shout-out to the ones I know off-hand:

Amanda Hanna
Jenn Johnson

In other news, yes, I know, I still haven’t changed the layout or started the process of posting photos. But one day, before the end of the year at worst, there should be a grand unveiling. I’m just too nitpicky about the presentation to settle on something!

Site Hiccup/Curse you, LowBudgetHost

posted April 28th, 2011 in Site News

Some may have noticed that the site was down and replaced with one of those annoying ad/”this domain may be for sale” landing pages. It seems that my hosting company, LowBudgetHost, did not propagate my email change all the way through their system. Thus, although my billing notices come through to my new address, the notice “your domain is about to expire” did not. It was just that when my most recent hosting bill came through, it occurred to me that the domain renewal should be up soon.

One of my friends had suggested I call the hosting company and they should be able to quickly fix the problem, since the automated renewal site decided it should fail after the actual renewal date. Of course, LowBudgetHost does not have a phone number listed on their contact page, and it took them two days to respond to a “high priority” support ticket I put in.

The same friend suggested I try their hosting provider, which among other things has no storage or bandwidth limits (compared to 1GB storage and 10GB bandwidth on my current plan) and only costs $2 more. I might do it, since it would also be handy for backing up more of my photos…whenever I get around to uploading my photos, I will quickly exceed 1GB. It will be kind of a pain to migrate all of the databases though…

Where are the photos?

posted March 12th, 2011 in Site News

I’ve more or less written the display end for the updated art and photo galleries, so where are the photos? I wrote a quick and dirty program to easily convert photos to the correct format for the site, but it’s a daunting task to comb multiple hard drives and go through even just a couple years worth of photos and decide which ones are worth sharing. (Plus, I have to take into account how much of my hosting space it’s going to eat up!) Hopefully some will start showing up soon.

« older posts