Well, hello there, 1P5ers! Nice to see you again. Seems as though we had a little Internet adventure today.
Last week, I made some changes with one of our web hosts, where the various domains we own are parked. It was a change in the hosting plan, since we were paying for more than we used, and I didn’t think it would affect anything active. In fact, I explicitly asked them to make sure it didn’t.
I thought everything was done. I had the accounts reset, access to a shiny new control panel, etc. I was pretty sure I had finished all the necessary maintenance…last week.
Today, I decided to hit confession before the big feast day. I also needed some serious prayer time, so I stayed put afterward for a while. It was only in my car, sitting in a traffic jam, when I saw a comment come in on my phone.
“Hey, I’m getting the 1P5 page is unavailable. Did you move it?”
So I typed in our URL. And…error. Refresh. Same error. I looked up, and I was still staring at the back of the same landscaping truck I’d been sitting behind on the same DC street for 25 minutes.
When you’re powerless to do anything about an outage, it’s not a good feeling. I still had a long drive home. I spent the rest of the day trying to get the situation fixed, and it’s only now, at nearly midnight, that I’m able to even see the website again. As it turns out, all of our Domain Name Server (DNS) records got reset to their default state when they changed our hosting plan and moved us to a new server. It took a few additional fixes and some round robin with tech support before I finally got things re-jiggered to the way they’re supposed to be. (The geekier things get, the more unqualified I become.)
The global DNS propagation tool I’m using is still showing that the site isn’t resolving in a number of areas, so hopefully everyone can get back on board soon. I also lost email for most of the day for the same reason, so if you wrote me a nice note and don’t hear back from me, please send it again.
Bottom line: the host screwed up, I evidently did too by not communicating clearly enough and/or understanding, and we had our first day-long outage.
Mea culpa. Back tomorrow with more of our usual goodness.
At least my soul is squeaky clean.
Looks fine here in DC.
A good confession makes anything better.
It appears to be in good working order from what I can tell. I’m a new-comer here and very happy I found this site. Keep up the great work!
Glad to have you, Practicing!