So…crap week all round really. But something nice did happen – one of my favourite bloggers, Premmeditations tagged me in a Liebster – right after being tagged the week before by Trawlergirl. As well as being a real compliment,  it was also a much needed kick up the backside to stop moping and do something a little bit productive, so once the kids were in bed I reclaimed the laptop from whichever sticky fingered midget had been private messaging Mr Bloom or whatever they do on the CBeebies site, and logged into my trusty wordpress dashboard.

Except I didn’t, because my WP dashboard wasn’t working, and as it turned out, nor was my site. Again. Gah. I have to say this has been a pretty frequent experience since going self hosted, made all the more annoying because I chose Bluehost purely on the basis that it was recommended by WordPress. Anyway, I tried again an hour later, then 2 hours later, and then 24 hours later…still kaput.  Tech support at Bluehost (who have always been willing and helpful) didn’t seem to be able to get to the bottom of the problem, which was compounded by the fact that they could see my site fine in America – in fact it took a twitter shout out to convince them that actually, it wasn’t just me being a muppet (thank you if you responded to my slightly panicked request to back me up!)

I also received a couple of recommendations for new hosting services – one of them being South West broadband, based in Cornwall. SW Broadband followed this up with a tweet to ask how they could help – they may have regretted this as they immediately received a stream of ever more panicked messages, the main gist of which was ‘I don’t understand anything, I am a muppet, please help me before I lose the plot COMPLETELY’.

By this time it was Friday, my site was still down, nobody at Bluehost could tell me why, and I was torturing myself with all the times I had MEANT to learn about backing up WordPress, but hadn’t actually managed to pull my finger out and do it. I might have cried, a little bit. It’s weird how the blogging thing has become such a part of my life – at the end of the day it’s just mitherings and blatherings, but it’s MY mitherings and blatherings, and I wanted them back!

Ryan at SW Broadband seemed singularly unfazed by all this, and also not at all bothered by the fact that I didn’t know what I was talking about, promising to transfer my blog as soon as he could. However, Friday evening was approaching, so I mentally resigned myself to getting my blog back on Monday or Tuesday. I might have cried a bit more (like I said, it’s been a crap week, OK?)

Not so much of the resignation needed, as it turns out! Ryan was on the case with Bluehost on Friday evening and Saturday morning, doing some magic whiteboarding shizzle, which I TOTALLY understand, though come to think of it it might have been whitelisting, or possibly whitelabelling….Whatever. In the meantime I was trying desperately to download a backup of my blog from Bluehost and failing at every turn – I may have downloaded SOMETHING as there seems to be a large lump of stuff clogging up my hard drive, but how to turn this zip-a-licious little icon into my actual blog was beyond me….in the end though it turned out to be irrelevant, as I received this lovely message:

Michelle
We’ve got a backup of your account downloading to our office here, we’ll restore to our hosting and update your domain as quickly as we can.
Thank you for your patience.* 
Warmest regards,
Ryan Devonshire
South West Broadband
t: 01872 672 050
w: http://www.swbroadband.co.uk

The next message I received was to tell my my blog would be all working and marvellous again by 3pm….and guess what? IT WAS! And here I am! Whoop!

I have to say, I have been blown away by the help I received from Ryan and the team at SW Broadband. If you are looking for a hosting service, and especially for someone to migrate your blog with no fuss, I cannot recommend them highly enough, based on my experience so far. The basic package is £2.49 a month, which seems really good value (it’s certainly cheaper than what I was paying before) but it’s not just about price, it’s about service and so far, the service has been OUTSTANDING.

Thank you, Ryan and friends! 🙂

*He did actually say this, though I think what he meant was ‘Thank god I’m a patient man or this woman would be DOING MY HEAD IN’

Disclaimer – this review was not requested or recompensed.

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