Death and Ressurecton of a Site

Monday was a crappy day for http://www.dvdfriend.us. I got an email from my hosting company (whom I'll keep anonymous) saying that they had a catastrophic database failure and they were working on recovering it. As the day progressed, I received more emails, and it ended up that they were only able to restore a database that's 6 months old.

6 months old. That's disgraceful. In the last 6 months, I completely renovated the website and added a lot of content, and now it's just gone. Data is sacred. You can't just lose 6 months worth of data.

For the most part, I'm just disgusted about it. I could probably be angry, but the disgust is too over powering. I've been using the company for over 5 years, and now I have to drop them because they don't know how to run a backup. I've spent most of the last week just shaking my head in disbelief.

So, I'm looking for a new hosting company. So far, I can't find the same service at a comparable price. I'm willing to pay more since the extra cash will probably result in some reliability, so I'm weighing my options.

In the meantime, the site is down. I can rebuild the database from my copy, but I'll still be missing 6 months worth of data. This brings me back to disgust. I just don't want to deal with it.

I'm taking this opportunity to reconsider the website and database design once again. I just finished the last major renovation a few months ago. The database is solid. I've been able to add any types of data that I want without a problem. I sort-of like the website too, though I have received some negative feedback. The fact is, I'm lousy at page design. I can code it, but can't make it pretty. I try to put too much stuff in a small spac.e So, I'm back to the drawing board.

I'm trying a simpler blog-based approach. You can go in and type whatever you want about whatever you want. If it happens to be about a movie, or book, or any other material thing that you can buy, then you can associate the blog entry to that product. By doing this, all similar entries can be grouped together. The previous version of the site were product based. So, if I just wanted to write something random, I had to finagle it to get it where I wanted on the site. Now, everything is just a blog entry, so no finagling. (At least, not yet).

I've simplified the home page quite a bit. There's room for 3 columns, but I only have one so far. It lists all of the recent blog entries in a simpler format. Previously, I tried to display everything about the product. I've trimmed it down in the new version. I'm using bigger fonts and less information. The rating is more prominently displayed. Once I get the images back, I'll put them in there too.

I'm starting off with just the basics. Once I find a new hosting company (you know, one that respects my data), I'll put the new site online and we'll see what happens.