My site crashed due to change of URLs in settings; this is how I rectified the problem

I started this website a month ago and did a little promotion also. But one fine day the site crashed. It was my fault.

I am using WordPress and my site is self hosted. I noticed that the pages of my website loads with the URL of my hosting account root folder like this.

http://www.rooturl.com/parakum/defaulturl

I checked the settings in general tab and changed the WordPress Address (URL) and Site Address (URL) to parakum.com without thinking much. I did not feel like it would be a fatal error that was irreversible.

Later studies showed me that WordPress Address (URL) is the way the Wordpress see my site and it should be like http://www.rooturl.com/parakum (no dash at the end)

The Site Address (URL) should be the way I want my readers see my URL. In this case it was parakum.com

I consulted my hosting company Godaddy. The auto generated respond said that I would be advised within 24 hours.

I surfed internet and found a nice article explaining the way to rectify the problem and corrected the error in my database. But the site remained crashed.

Godaddy advise did not seem any help. It appeared further complicating the issue. Since the site was new and I had backups in my blogger blogs blog.parakum.com and blogging.parakum.com, I decided to reinstall it.

I did the re-installation through Google Hosting Connections as my applications, as I did earlier, but the installation seemed never ending.

I waited more than 24 hours and I looked for other options. Then I deleted everything related to the previous site and re-installed it. I deleted not only the directory / folder in my hosting account, the database was also removed. A new directory and a database were created. Installation was done manually using Filezilla Client for file transfer. This article and this article instructed me.

Installation was fast and visible. Power failure in the middle of the first attempt led to an incomplete installation but a second attempt was successful. Then I was directed to create wp-config.php file. It was simpler than I thought and WordPress mockingly said sorry for not being complex as I expected.

Now, I handle Wordpress very carefully. This is a sea of sharks and you are completely helpless alone in a pedal boat.

But I am happy at the end of the operation which enlightened me a lot. A blogger must be a a bit of webmaster as well. Otherwise you will have to hire a professional webmaster. It is not easy in every part of the world and it is costly too.

Read blogging.parakum.com for similar and more interesting articles on blogging

Ajith Parakum Jayasinghe 
www.parakum.com

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