After all these other trips, it was time for a digital one.

I've moved this site - and all of my other sites. After 18 years with WHB, it's time for a new chapter: CDB is now loading from a new host!

You may have noticed the move, despite my best intentions to keep it seamless, since the main page briefly (for an hour or so) showed nothing but a 500 error earlier this week, as I scrambled to figure out what settings I'd missed to adjust in the transitioning process.

Turns out it was the directory structure.

Some plugins/settings store the full server-based directory structure, rather than a relative path, and though domain-based paths stay the same even with a new IP, the directory structure on a server generally does not.

Why store the full path though? Do they really have to? Even when they link to files that all exist within the public_html directory; under the branch of the main domain?

It seems unnecessary, but that was the one thing I missed with the move anyhow. I fixed it, and the site has been running... relatively OK since.

Loading times do seem to vary a bit throughout the day, and I'm not yet sure if this is a host-related issue or a me-related issue.

The new firewalls are different than the old ones, the server architecture too, not all the same PHP extensions are enabled or installed - and some are that weren't previously. The database is newer, the control panel is different... there's a lot of new to go through!

I'm experimenting with server-side caching and other new settings, but it seems sometimes the site loads blazingly fast - faster than it did before, yet sometimes not so. Sometimes it's aggravatingly slow. But it works. The uptime so far is still 100%.

I'm not sure I'll stay with this host, and so I'm not revealing any details as to who I'm using yet - if I do I'll write a proper review in time, but let's give them the benefit of the doubt and see how it goes shall we?

I'm also intrigued to hear how you experience the new. Are things loading faster? Is the site stable? Is something else buggin'?

Now then, now that the pleasantries and practicalities of the move are out of the way, how about a long-form rant on why I'm swappin' servers...

Read on...

I've changed my backup plugin. Finally.

I didn't plan to really, even with the ongoing issues.

However my settings with BackWPup disappeared with the recent move.

I first tried to dig up some information on where these backup settings were stored in the database to restore them - if they were stored there at all, but couldn't find any information thereof, so... I figured maybe it was time to start fresh and try their new version. The one they claim now meets all user demands, fourteen versions after the trialed and tested 4.1.7 that I've stubbornly stuck with, that still worked so well...

So how was this new 5.1.3 variant? Not good.

Why? Well let me tell you what's currently wrong with it; what they have not fixed - or rather what issues currently plague the plugin, despite their ongoing and increased attempts to right all wrongs:

1. When you install the plugin, you're forced to go through a configuration wizard to get started. There's no way to skip this - I consider this a major usability flaw for anyone who's already used the plugin, or just doesn't need a wizard. But it gets worse...
2. Once the wizard's complete, the plugin makes a complete backup of your account! There's no way to skip this either. A complete backup for me currently weighs in at ~24GB. I don't want a complete backup - I manage those via the server! All I want is a regular database backup, or selective file backups, with only files that have actually changed.
3. The settings you toggle via the wizard don't work either. If you try to change '15 revisions' to another number - both with file and database backups, nothing happens. (You can change these numbers later, but this initial toggle is completely broken.)
4. The option to select either database or file backup - or both - doesn't work either! The plugin generates a complete backup regardless, and both settings are turned on - even if you toggle them off, until said first complete backup has been generated, and further setting adjustments and toggles start working.
5. The UI is a mess. The most useful options are hidden away, the controls are big and clunky, they've opted for a custom font that further increases load time, and the design overall is just... very unprofessional and unnecessarily 'bloated'. The old was better.
6. Finally - and this is the big one - the 'Backup Now' button does not work either! On their support forum they recommend you uninstall, and reinstall, and reactivate the plugin, and then it should work. But no, it didn't! I tried this. All I got was another full ~24GB backup.

I wonder if this could've had something to do with my performance issues with the site this week, that I assumed had to do with the new server...

There are still options missing compared to the more usable 4.1.7 release, too. And you still can't use a backup directory outside the public_html directory, which is a 'feature' they introduced after version 4.0.1.

'For security reasons', they wrote then.

For what, for worse security? To let users potentially download your backups when they're stored in a publicly accessible directory?

It seems a bigger security risk to have your backups located within this directory than outside it, if someone somehow manages to get around whatever directory protection this reliable plugin has implemented to keep people out of it.

I don't understand their reasoning.

I don't mean to keep beating a dead horse here though. That was just the first problem I had with this plugin - or rather the first downgrade in functionality I noticed, and there are still problems...

I tried downgrading to one of the earlier versions of the plugin after my failed attempts at using the new version, but faced some time-out issues with the server then (possibly related to a sudden increase in data and resource use?), and saw it as a sign it was maybe time to leave this be.

I tested a few more backup alternatives since the last post too, but I think I'm done now. I settled for Updraft after all - the by far most used backup plugin available - even though the feature set's comparatively limited.

So far it's worked great though. No bugs! No problems.

At least not big ones.

The cron wouldn't work properly for a while, but that may have been a server migration issue too. Or even a BackWPUp-related thing...

I like the Updraft interface too. It's simple. Not clunky. And they have some useful maintenance/server tools included along with the backup stuff.

Currently, Updraft seems like a safer; more tested alternative than BackWPUp - although version 4.1.7 of the latter is still good. BackWPUp was extensive, though inevitably will also fall behind in terms of security and framework updates now, if you refuse to use the newer versions.

Anyone up for starting a branch on that version? And further developing it as it should have been developed, with the full set of original features and functionality intact?

For posterity, here's the list of changes BackWPup have gone through since the last time I posted about them:

Read on...

Sometimes the most unexpected correlations somehow make the most sense. :) Who would've thought...

Source.

After Tirana and Banja Luka there was this!

A week-long trip - for the third year in a row - to our idyllic maybe most popular in-country ski resort haven eight-hours-by-train from Stockholm up to the Northern parts of Sweden: Åre.

We went for lots of walks, some of us skied a bit (I really need to learn to), played board games, celebrated a Birthday (and two others retrospectively - and another a bit in advance), I worked from a distance one day, we ate good and overall just had a blast at this location.

I mean how can you not when you have a view like this?

Read on...

Banja Luka, a slumbering little city in the Northern parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in the Republika Srpska (Serbian Republic), with a cafe dedicated to Putin in the city center, and a grand Communist-era museum with the ambient background noise of water leaking through the roof; colorful buckets strewn out across the floor....

That's where I've been this time!

It was nice - nicer than it maybe sounds! And adventurous.

Once again I was there with good buddy Bear, on a brief weekend visit.

We landed at BLIA (Banja Luka International Airport) late on a Friday night, shared a taxi with a couple of other Swedes I got to talking to on the plane, got dropped off by an apartment building somewhere in the city, managed to get directions via helpful shop owners who barely spoke English to an ATM (in difference from Albania they have no service fees!), then to a little kiosk that sold SIM cards (cheap!) and finally with said SIM card we were able to call the motel we were staying at, find our way to a bus station, and head to said motel!

It was situated just outside the city, by a river, with lush mountains on both sides.

We missed the motel stop and had to walk back to it, on streets without street lights, littered with trash, with stray dogs on the side, and cars streaking by at uncomfortable speeds...

But the motel was nice! They had free tea/coffee by the reception, we had a good room, and beyond that the entire motel to ourselves!

March is apparently a bit off-season in Banja Luka.

Anyway, pictures!

Read on...

It's been a while now! I was in Tirana sometime last month... or the month before? At the end of the month before and the start of last month!

I've been planning to post a quick recap of the trip for a while now, but other trips took precedence, and then other stuff, and time's been flying all too fast for me to get a handle on the matter... but finally, here goes:

Read on...