Sunday 25 January 2009

Ain't it Awful?

What started out (4 hours ago) as a bit of fun has turned into my worst nightmare. Inspired by all the other pretty blogs on the block, I decided it was high time I spent a bit of time investigating customizing my background. I did some thorough research on alliebrowndesigns. blogspot.com & it all looked wonderfully safe & easy. I was assured of losing none of my widgets so I proceeded to change my template to Minima, then edit my HTML to customize. Fortunately (I hope...)

Blogger suggested, via some pop-up text just after I clicked on Edit HTML, that I backup my blog as per their instructions, which I did. Then I proceeded to do the cut, copy, paste thing, which all worked fine, only when I viewed my blog it was just the same (ie the awful white Minima) without the beautiful digital-scrapbooking look of the Allie Brown design I had selected. I tried for hours...I'm not stupid. The instructions were simple. I followed them. The new HTML is still there. Only my blog has not changed. From what I have learnt on my blog ride, this is impossible. Yet it is true.

When I gave up trying to customize my background (I sent Allie an e mail & hope she will get back to me soon) I scrolled down, only to find, to my HORROR that all my customizations, ie gadgets/widgets/text/photos/archives/newly updated blog roll/ sitemeter/live traffic feed/clustrmap/blinkies/etc/etc/etc were ALL GONE!!!!!! I then spent an hour on Blogger Help to try to find out how to restore my blog (the one I had backed up). Now I was delighted. It was, again, simple. I followed the instructions & then...it said THERE IS A PROBLEM WITH THIS FILE & it could not be imported back. So it is still sitting forlornly on my desktop, refusing to open.

Devestated as I am, there is nothing I can do but pray that my dear IT man, who is coming next week (hopefully...) can RESTORE the blog I backed up, albeit MINIMA (plain white) but hopefully with all my customizations (side-bar thingies). There is no warning on the change templates page, saying that you will lose all your sidebar stuff, or I would never have done it for crying out loud!!!!! Here I was thinking that I as finally making such good headway & now I am practically back to square one. To describe myself as devastated is something of an understatement. Anyway, until I get confirmation from my IT man Anton, as to whether or not my customisations can be restored you are going to have to look at a VERY UGLY BLOG - sorry! All my interesting little bits & pieces have gone (hopefully only on a short holiday) so now you know...

Allie Brown has another, even simpler way of customising your blog, without altering the HTML, by going into LAYOUT & clicking on Add a Gadget, then clicking on Add HTML & putting the HTML she gives you, via copy & paste, straight into there. Now the very worrying thing with this is that when I tried to do this (as I have done many times before as it's how I add most of my gadgets) that option NO LONGER EXISTED. Go see for yourselves...it's no longer there! Check via your dashboard to. There is no LAYOUT tab. How in the heck do you add anything then? There is some blurb about upgrading if you want to customise, & losing all your previous customisations in the process. Very worrying. If that hadn't been changed TONIGHT at the same time I was tinkering with my blog, perhaps all my sidebar gadgets would be there. Talk about terrible timing...

I just have this sinking feeling that THAT has something to do with it. If any of you have had a similar experience and/or have any brainwaves please let me know. Distressed signing off ;-(...

11 comments:

Vicki said...

Oops!!! What a pain though - hope it comes right for you.

ClustrMaps Team said...

Ouch - sorry to hear about you losing all that stuff! Well, if it helps, here at ClustrMaps Central we can at the very least do two things to ease the pain:

1. We've just upgraded you to ClustrMaps+ status at no charge (better zoomed in maps, and no more ads). The better maps should appear within 24 hours of you restoring the HTML to your blog (see next).

2. Here's a link to detailed instructions with screen snapshots for (re)installing ClustrMaps on your blog

I hope this helps!

Please get directly in touch if we can assist you in any additional way.

All best wishes,

-CJ on behalf of the ClustrMaps Team

Andrea said...

Oh what a horrible and frustrating experience...a bit like spilling drops of coffee on a precious piece of scrapping....sigh....hope it comes right, remember the most important thing is the content, the rest is just frosting so I am sure all will continue to enjoy your blog till you get it sorted.

xxx
A

Monique Liedtke said...

Oh, that's horrible!! Keeping my fingers crossed your IT man will be able to restore your blogger back-up!!

Cindy said...

I feel for you, you poor thing. How absolutely frustrated you must feel. I truly hope everything is still sitting there in la la land ready for you to refind. good luck

Cindy said...

You poor thing, how frustrating for you. I sincerely hope you are able to reload everything.

Desire Fourie said...

Hi Helen. Well I must, even with loosing your gadgets etc., your blog already looks much better, at least I can now read your posts from your blog and not first in Google Reader, as I could not read your text easily beforehand. What I do is I always go into my template, press ctrl+A to copy all my html. Then open a Word document and ctrl+V to paste all my blog's template html into a word document. Then save the word document. So whenever you blog crashes, you can just copy all your html in your saved word document and paste it into your blog's template. Just a suggestion. I am sure your IT guru will sort his out for you. Hugs from Desire

CathQuillScrap said...

good luck with the restore... can't say I had problems converting to Allie's backgrounds... so yip could have had something to do with blogger. Hope all gets sorted soon soon.

Mette Thomas said...

Thats terrible - I have been contemplating changing over to typepad maybe its time ??

Hope it all works out
Mette

Anonymous said...

oh dear, your blog looks positively naked! :-)

good luck! i know you won't appreciate it now, but the best way to learn is to battle a bit. i hope you learn a LOT!

i'm sure you will be back soon, better than ever!

Michelle Ramsay said...

Oh, now that is terrible, although I do like the new look!