Boasts

Today my ego took a battering as i foolishly tried to install a pretty complex module onto boasts. Needless to say the install was a total disaster beyond my worst nightmares.

I have been trying to emulate the typepad.com model of allowing users to have their own blog with web addresses like this fred.boasts.co.uk or jane.boasts.co.uk. The web addresses look fab in theory, very memorable and fitting for this kind of website.

I downloaded a module called Domain Access to create subdomains for users, unfortunately half-way thru configuring the module, i made an error and boasts vanished. Obviously, when things like this happen, the first reaction is to tell yourself not to panic. So i did that and still managed to swear at the screen and felt the hot rush i get when i know things have gone very pear-shaped.. I began to realise this wasnt going to something i could fix in a few seconds.

Frantic searching on google and drupal were not forthcoming with a fast solution, so i posted a few messages and decided to go for a walk down the beach. You might think this is a crazy move, but from my experience the best thing to do is walk away from a disaster and come back to it when you in a more normal state of mind.

This proved to be the right move, as i walked in i caught a few brief emails about my problem and managed to grab hold of Jonny on SkypeME at the same time. Frantically typing out the problem, Jonny managed to come up with solutions galore, on the fly, to find a way of getting the site back online.
After about an hour and tweaking code and stripping out the broken module from the database, the problem went away and boasts came back online.

Phew what a relief, Jonny is a star. Without his help today i dread to think what kind of depression i would be in now. I think i shall use a test domain for this project now instead of blowing my site up. Live and Learn.