The WCFA Website

[Greg]

In effort to standardize the multiple websites that belong to the Berkeley Millionaire, the Berkeley Millionaire had his three websites redesigned including the one for the Archive. This was also an effort to show the websites represented businesses rather than just hobbies the Berkeley guy was pouring money into. Unfortunately, the IRS didn't see it that way and the Berkeley guy had to pay a hefty fine.

He also had to divest himself of the Archive. Sort of. The physical assets still reside at his club. But he is no longer paying any money into it. The last thing he paid fo,r though, was the redesign of the website.

To be clear, I host the website. I have rented server space for maybe 2 decades now. It's where this forum lives. Which means I have to involved in the redesign of the website, despite the fact there is no more money.

My hosting provider has a nifty feature where I can make a copy of the existing website into another spot on the server which allows you to make changes without affecting the original site. It's called a Sandbox. You can play in it and it doesn't hurt anything else. All you have to do is press a button to get it started. Once you are done with the redesign you click another link and all the changes merge back into the original site. Pretty snazzy. In theory.

Well, I clicked the link to make the sandbox and nothing happened. I did this multiple times to no effect. I eventually had to get the hosting provider to work it on their end, which they did and I got a sandbox. I then gave the keys to the sandbox to the designer and away she went. This was back in December.

Over the intervening months, I would get the occasional question or request, but not a lot.

That all changed last week when HK told me the site was about to go live. That's when I got the request to upgrade the PHP for the site. This what messed up the forum because that was a hosting wide decision which led to me erasing the forum.

Well this is the week where I got to click the link to merge the sandbox site into the old site. I clicked it and nothing happened. I clicked it multiple times. Yeah, I should have known this was going to be a struggle when it started. I called the hosting company. We walked through the problem. They admitted there was a problem. They said they were going to get the engineers involved.

The next day I get an email informing that the engineers are working on the problem. They report other people have a similar problem with the merge function. They don't know when they will be able to fix it. In the meantime, why don't you just do the transfer manually? Here are some links to show you how.

What the what? I send off an angry email. They reply back that they are working on it and still don't know when they can fix it. Grrrr.

So, I research the problem. I learn about exporting and importing Wordpress XML files. I figure I can try it. What is the worst that can happen? Don't answer.

I export the sandbox files and import them into the old site. I hit refresh and nothing has changed. The old site looks like the old site. Crap. I try it a few more times. Same. Same.

It dawns on me that my hosting provider when they made their merge function just automated what I had done, making all the different steps into one macro activated by clicking a link. Which is why it still didn't work.

I realized the problem is that the importer will not overwrite files that have the same name. The files in the both the sandbox and the old site have the same names because one is the copy of the other. I now go in and change all the names of all the pages and projects in the old site. That was fun. But it worked. All the new pages come in. All the new projects come in.

None of the formatting comes in. I was hoping I had just misplaced the file that details all the formatting, but no.  Today, I figured I needed to go through customizing option and change all the numbers to match the ones in the sandbox pages. Another good time.

But it's up and it works. And it looks like it should. Except for one small part I'm going to let the designer figure out why there is a problem.

Computers! Making our lives easier.

[Drunk Monk]

Yikes.

Berkeley Millionaire = BM?  Sorry that's high in my vernacular right now - what with my mom's opioid intake, staying regular is something that must be monitored daily.  I know, I know, TMI.

As long as DOOM is safe.  

[Greg]

I eschewed the initials for just that reason.

It's perfectly safe. Come inside.

My father was taking Gabapentin at the end. I'm thinking he didn't like it too much because I found bottles and bottles of the stuff when we cleaned out his stuff.

[Drunk Monk]

I was on gabapentin too - for my arthritis.  But it made me spontaneously sleepy, like when driving over hwy17, so I had to stop.  I didn't get that deep into the dosage.  That's a neural, not an opioid, so it doesn't constipate.

The nice thing is that we have a large stash of my old unexpired gaba as overage.  With the controlled substances, insurance only gives you a week's worth, unless you can afford to pay out of pocket, and that's like a benjamin a week.  

From fencing websites to eliminatory functions.  That's quite a leap.  Okay, maybe not.

But still, do I win the day's thread hijacking yet?

[Greg]

Every goddamn day.

[Drunk Monk]

yay me