Recently I decided to jump in and fix something that had been bothering me for a while.

The Action On The Side website had been hosted by the hosting site James uses (James who created AOTS). Each year I reimbursed James for hosting, an annual cost I had forgotten about. Over the years my ‘graphical ineptitude’ had made the site clunky and hard to navigate. I was getting reminders to update the php (which I had no idea how to do). It was due for an update.

So, I contacted James, said I was finally moving the hosting to GoDaddy (which I use for my sites). I got it transferred over. Then had to pay for the new hosting (<£150 for two years, more than for the previous hosting).

I knew I had to somehow connect the WordPress to GoDaddy. Then I realised, of course, that the @actionontheside.tv mailing list would be connected to the previous hosting service (it redirects to a gmail). What to do?? What if I lost the email address??

I created an archive of the AOTS files and emails on Google (where I pay £1.59 p/month for 100GB online storage.

Then, on Sunday, the bloody worst happened. I went to log in to the AOTS Website, and couldn’t bloody log in!

I had broken the AOTS website!

Sunday I spent trying to log in, getting more and more upset. How could I be so stupid?!

I realised I had to get a website up pronto. AOTS had no website whatsoever. NOTHING! What if someone was looking at it.

I had to quickly set up a new website and populate it.

Great opportunity to update the previously clunky website. I had to make a quick decision: Squarespace or Wix.

I chose Wix.

I started developing the site on Wix. But I didn’t have the images that we previously had uploaded in one place (they’re across different online sources and different external hard drives). And I hadn’t planned how I would set it up. And then I hit a block — I needed to pay for Wix for being able to have my own domain address.

Then I realised that the hello@actionontheside.tv email address wasn’t directing anywhere. What if someone was trying to email me?! I had to pay for that as well!

You know what, by this stage I didn’t care, I just had to get a professional site up, so I just hit “pay”, and kept building. I ended up paying £158 and £60 to Wix for a website and email.

Oh, but the previous AOTS google email address was no longer connected to the @actionontheside.tv email address. Wix set up a new one. So I had to set that up: with a behind the scenes Google account that I was too stressed and time-poor to understand. So now we have the previous actionots and now a new email hello@actionontheside.tv.

Of course, I spent ALL DAY trying to fix this website, but I had to stop that evening to grade student work and plan for the following week.

THEN I tried to see the work I had updated, to see if it worked.

Oh, but there was NOTHING on the page. No website registered.

That was fun. (/s)

I tried different browsers. I tried clearing cookies and my cache. The website was not coming up. There is a thing where it takes time for your cookies to recognise a site is there (or something, I really don’t understand). I contacted GoDaddy support. The woman there could see the website — it’s just I couldn’t.

That Sunday was a really bad mental health day.

I tried my work computer on Monday. Still no website.

It now appears (thankfully).

One week later, and I have not had the time to finish building it. Oh, and I forgot the password I set up for the hello@ email address (because I was so stressed and in a rush when I created it), so have had to contact Google to get it updated.

So, yeah. I broke a website. You can check it out here. I’m slowly updating it, but only when I have time.