Earlier this year I did a bit of tinkering with the blog in hopes of resolving two problems. First, the random-post function broke, and would simply reload the home page instead of sending the reader to a random post. Second, the archives page displayed some broken shortcode instead of displaying a chronological list of all the posts that Legal allows me to leave up.

I couldn’t figure out how these problems happened, and I couldn’t figure out how to fix them. So I downloaded all the posts, pages, comments, media, etc. Then I created a backup blog. Then I uploaded everything to the backup. The backup worked perfectly. All the content was there, the random-post function worked, and the archives looked right. I figured that meant I could reset the main blog, reupload everything, and have a perfectly functioning main blog.

That was incorrect. The main blog had the same problems as before, plus a couple of new ones. There were duplicate posts. About a dozen comments were un-published and awaiting approval, several dozen comments were completely missing, and about 700 comments were duplicated. Some commenters disappeared, even if their comments didn’t, which meant those comments would now be attributed to the blog– i.e., to me, so it looked like I was talking to myself. It all made for an even more disjointed and incomprehensible reading experience than usual.

At least I could work around the problem with the archive by using the old version of my archive. The old version was called “Every post on one big page.” I typed the date and title of every post, hyperlinked them, and put them one on big page. It was a lot of work to set up originally, and it was a moderate amount of work to update for the first time in years, and it would mean a little bit extra work after publishing every post going forward… but it was a functioning, up-to-date archives page. That said, I still preferred the speed and cleanliness of using a teensy bit of shortcode instead of maintaining a list of seven-hundred-something posts. And I still missed my damn random-post button.

So today I thought I’d take another crack at it by turning the clean, functional backup copy into the main blog. Once the backup was up and running properly, I could nuke the original version from orbit to eradicate whatever code, setting, plugin, etc., was causing all these errors.

So I activated the backup, made it the main, and took down the original version. The backup worked flawlessly.

For about an hour.

The good news is that the newer set of problems virtually disappeared. There was (I think) only one duplicate post. The problems with the comments seemed resolved. But the original problems– the broken random-post link and the broken archives– returned.

Thankfully, after spending a few minutes with tech support– the aptly named “Happiness Engineers”– the problem was discovered. Turns out that earlier this year, back at the beginning of this wildly entertaining saga, I made an upgrade that, ironically, just plain didn’t include the random-post function or the right archive shortcode. Not sure why that is, but here we are. And when I reactivated that upgrade today, on the backup-turned-new-main-version-of-the-blog, the random-post and archive functions broke down.

The Happiness Engineers saved the day, and solved the problems, fast and gratis. The “Random” button once again sends the reader to a randomly chosen post. The Archives page works cleanly, and updates automatically. And the comments no longer make me look like a deranged lunatic who talks to himself half the time and to imaginary commenters the other half.

But it occurs to me, however meaninglessly, that this is the teleporter problem. In the past, when I screwed up the blog nearly beyond repair, the proper software updates would save the day, and the blog would lumber on. This is different, because right now I’m typing an entry on a properly functioning, on-line blog, and I can open a separate window, go behind the scenes and see the old, dead blog at the same time. Actually, since the ones and zeroes that made up the original blog itself have certainly been overwritten, and rewritten, and reallocated, and rewhatevered to different hosts and servers and machines several times since aught-five, this is the teleporter problem exponentiated.

Welp. This is what I write about instead of commenting on anything substantial. Oh well. Here begins the blog again again again again… again.