Finally, the new issue of the Norwegian Textile Letter is out! This is a non-textile weaving post, but it supports one of my strong beliefs. If you can’t figure something out, find help! Besides the time and energy (and fun) of pulling together the issue, I encountered technical problems. Two of the articles required linking to pdfs of other articles, and crazily, WordPress would not let me upload files of more than 2MB. I puzzled over this for days before doing what I should have done in the first place, google the question. I discovered that it might have to do with the php code for maximum allowable size, and is a function not of WordPress, but of the hosting software. I logged on to Bluehost, and rather than allowing me to go into my files, I was blocked by a page with a couple of warnings about coding problems. And then, what do you mean, Bluehost, that you don’t have technical support people working on Christmas Day? Happily, the very helpful technical support people were back on the job the day after.
The support person (Patrick) asked me asked for the domain name, and I told him norwegiantextileletter, all run together, dot com. It didn’t work. Try again. No luck. “Could you spell that?” he asked. As soon as I got to the x in textile, he said, “Oh!” Given the computer nature of everything he does, he thought I ran the norwegian TECH-STYLE letter. Funny.
I told him my file size problem and how I couldn’t even log on, and he sounded excited that he knew just the answer; he had helped another person with just that problem just a few days ago. The issue? The version of php running on the host had been automatically updated and the new version had bugs. It happened quite some time ago and it hadn’t been an issue because I had only been adding images lately. He reverted my account back to the previous php version and POOF, the problems disappeared. I was lucky. This took only about four minutes and he said he was on the phone with the last person for more than an hour before figuring out the problem. It just goes to show that calling technical support is often the answer, instead of banging my head on the table and feeling inadequate. I could never have solved that problem on my own.
So whether it is a loom issue, a weaving draft issue, an editing issue, or a programming issue, problem-solving is fun – but sometimes the right tech support is the best way to go.