I Can't Recommend Birchhosting Enough

When I build (mostly Drupal) sites I often do it with the software installers like Softilicious in the control panel. Sometimes they are just to play with, sometimes there are some fatal errors with modules that react badly and I have to start again. The result is that a lot of cruft builds up with databases no longer connected to anything, but taking up space and clutter. Today's lesson could be summed up by the phrase "be careful when clearing the cruft".

I am usually very careful when doing this, but today either my judgement went a bit off the mark or I was just careless; twice. I deleted previous installs of Drupal 7, knowing I'd tried various things when moving the site over to the new server. I assumed the latest install on the proper domain was the active one, ie the one to leave well alone, only to find I'd deleted the site.

I then noticed that the database was still there, and should be able to reinstall Drupal 7 and attach that database, the problem there is that Softilicious creates the database, user and password, so I had no way to get the password to reattach it. At this point I asked Birchhosting support if there was any way for me to find that info out and it's not possible. I then decided since everything else was blown and I'd be rebuilding from scratch anyway, to just delete the database.

I got further responses from Birchhosting support suggesting that I simply create a new database user, add them to that old database and it should all be fine. The eagle eye'd among you will spot the problem. Yes, this was the database that I assumed now to be useless, turns out to have been not so useless after all. Well it would have been if I didn't delete it.

You'll probably have spotted by now, I'm not a sysadmin. My skills come in at the content and design layer.

I asked if Birchosting had any backups of clients databases, that could be restored. It may be a few hours or days out of date but it's a LOT quicker than rebuilding from scratch. At which point I was feeling weary, low and very annoyed with myself, I needed to take time out. When I returned an hour or so ago, I found some more responses from Birchhosting telling me that they'd managed to restore the database, so I tried to create a new user, add it in etc but it didn't do anything.

Again I resigned myself to having to rebuild from scratch, knowing the man hours it'd taken to rebuild the first time.

Shortly after replying that I'd tried everything suggested but nothing worked, I closed the ticket and gave up. Momments later I got another reply from Birchhosting telling me it had to run it's script to make the change. Again hope grabbed me, I created yet another user, password, added them in, changed the settings.php to reflect it and tried again.

It's passed midnight in the UK, where both myself and Birchhosting are located, I expected the script to be actioned on tomorrow morning, but within minutes my site came back alive, and I'm able to write this post now.

I am starting a Drupal web design company, I just chose and registered the domain today with Birchhosting. As part of that I'll be buying hosting and domain names for clients, all of that will be exclusive with Birchhosting. I seriously can't recommend them highly enough. They saved me a LOT of extra work due to my own carelessness today by going above and beyond the call of duty. This is in addition to the episode involving ASC which I'll blog about when the site goes live.

Some companies differentiate on price (be cheaper), some on extras (we throw in lots of crap you may not need just to bulk up the perceived value) while others do it on service. Birchhosting hit all three targets. If you want even more value, use the code thistleweb when signing up, and get an extra 10% off.

You live and learn. In case it needs repeating "be careful when cleaning out the cruft, and always have a backup". I did use a Drupal module called Backup & Migrate which I still do use, the difference is that where I used to store them in a folder on the server, a folder I deleted as part of my mistake today, I now take the default option of the module and download to store locally. There is an addon for that called Backup & Migrate Dropbox which seemingly adds the option of a Dropbox account to the locations available. I have only seen it on the modules list on Drupal.org.