Trashing Movable Type
If anybody was spending their Sunday reading my blog, they'd have noticed that it was mostly hosed (meaning trashed). They might also have noticed that links to individual blog entries still worked, more or less. What a mess!
As they used to say (whoever they are) when I worked at an enterprise database company, "Live by a database, die by your database!" The problem was that my Web hosting company had hosed the instance of the MySQL database used to store the Movable Type entries, and were taking their precious time about restoring the database from backups. Compounding the problem, yesterday before I released the database was corrupted, and after it had been partially restored, I rebuilt the site, writing over the then-current state of the database.
To be absolutely precise, Movable Type doesn't actually store the content entries in the database, at least the way I have it configured (each entry is a file). But it does store pointers to all the information in the database tables, so that without this information one has nothing.
Movable Type, and other server-side blogging software, works with a database and a Web server to form a Content Management Server (CMS). Yes, this is complex software. One should back up content regularly, and not just rely on a remote host to do this with enough care. (Mea Culpa!)
Blogging software started out as something to meet an apparently simple purpose - to facilitate posting of an online diary in reverse chronological order. As time as gone by, this functionality has expanded. Blogs automatically put out syndication feeds, for one example. And blogging has become a widespread communication channel, used for corporate communications, technical support, and so on, as well as personal communications. The complexity of installing, configuring, and maintaining server-side blogging software now rivals that of "grown-up" enterprise content management servers (products from Documentum, Filenet, Microsoft, Vignette, and others).
If you're not a happy propeller head, you probably shouldn't get involved in running your own blogging software like I do (it is a time sink if nothing else).
There are a number of services that will host your blog: Google's Blogger, LiveJournal, or Typepad (both Live Journal and TypePad are associated with Movable Type.)
For the blog you want, hosting costs something. If you are going to run your own copy of Movable Type, you can get Six Apart, the company that publishes Movable Type, to install it for you (again for a fee). And if you want anything fancy in your weblog design, you probably should find someone who is good at creating customized sites using the software and work with them.
Needless to say, I breathed a big sigh of relief when I got my database restored (rolled back to Saturday). I rebuilt my blog, and it was pretty much as good as new. I'm now resolved to be conscientious about personal content backups (in addition to the ISP), ah, after I finish this one more entry...
Posted by Harold Davis at April 11, 2005 10:15 AM
