Hello world!

Through user error (more on that in a minute) the database that held all of this site’s content, even the really old shit that wasn’t public anymore, was deleted. Yep, deleted. Not renamed, not misplaced, not out of reach. Deleted. Gone, forever. Technically I could have paid my host to retrieve it all from an old backup but I wasn’t compelled to do that. In fact other than one giant gulp when I realized what had happened I wasn’t upset about the loss of this site’s content. The vast majority of the content had been out of view for years. Even more of the site’s old content is actually still in a Moveable Type backup on my hard drive and in the cloud. I guess what I’m saying is that I still care about the early years of my content and since I’ve rebuilt this site I clearly care about my future content, but the middle years? Much like middle school they’re best left vaguely remembered, not documented and referenced.

While I’m not mad that the data is gone I am mad that my host made it so easy to make the error that led to deletion. It’s such a poor user experience that led to clicking the button that deleted the database. The button didn’t say delete by the way, I thought I was creating a new db with a different name. Instead I was deleting and replacing the existing one. There was no “are you sure you want to delete database X?” Just poof, gone. So while the blame for the deletion is all mine I really do wish my host hadn’t made it so easy for user error to cause the complete loss of content. But if I think about that I have to think about how I haven’t performed my own proper backups of this site in ages. And that’s no fun so let’s just move on.

In any case here we are, a new beginning.