Raising the good ship
I got an email on Tuesday from someone I hadn’t heard from in ages, Corco, who I last knew as a frequently-put-into-timeout teen (which, as a frequently put-into-timeout kid myself… lot of sympathy), letting me know that the site was down, and had been for a bit, and could I perhaps help in an archive and restoration effort?
I had thought I’d handed over the domain along with hosting way back on the day, but no! Still in my name, so I hunted down the domain registrar that bought our domain registrar, paid to get the name out of hock, and yeah, the emergency keys still work, thanks to everyone who could have kicked me off and didn’t.
Which, if anyone’s reading this: a huge thanks to everyone who kept USSM up and running into 2023 after I left. I’ll write more about this in a second, but right now I have to back this whole thing up, perform a huge batch of upgrades (wow, did I not miss keeping WordPress secured), and then I do not know what’s after that urgent work. I’ll update this post as I go. This has brought up a lot of feelings.
Thanks to David J Corcoran for reaching out. I promise I’ll lift any remaining commenting bans after I get through this first part.
Update: database backed up, can’t get the files
Update: ugh, can’t upgrade the version. This is bad.
You cannot update because WordPress 7.0 requires PHP version 7.4 or higher. You are running version 7.2.34-54+0~20250311.107+debian11~1.gbpd6988c.
Now I’m worried we’re going to immediately be hijacked and turned into sports betting slop.
Aww…yeah.
Just like the good ol’ days!