Yesterday was a disaster. Let this be a warning to you, and I should have known better.I was fiddling around with the Google AdSense system, contemplating adding it to my blog. Not something I expect to make a lot of money from, just more of a curiosity type thing. It came up in discussion with a friend of mine whom I blog with on another section of the web on completely unrelated subjects. Goggle told him/us that we could make in upwords of $500 a month with our site traffic. We were both skeptical, but I figured I would try it here first to see how it works.
In my inexperience with Blogger, I made a fundamental mistake, or two actually. The first (the big one) was not backing up my code so I would have an archival copy in case I screwed something up beyond repair. The second was not understanding that there is a system in place to automatically add the Google stuff into Blogger (Google owns Blogger, so I guess it makes sense). So I jumped through the hoops, got approval to add the AdSense from Google, and went about it the hard way adding in code to my template. When doing this, it wiped out a huge section of my code, and bombed everything other than my blog header. So I spent 3 hours (12AM-3AM) manually piecing my code back together. I had to dig out the Google Cache version of my blog and dig through that code (which is not the same as the base template code). I had to cross examine the code with another blog of mine to see what I was missing/had messed up. It was back and forth for 3 hours trying to straighten things out. I got most of it fixed, but I'm not happy with my side bar and footer still. The side bar is jacked, centering all of the text instead of left justifying. Hopefully I will find that cause soon, as it bugs the crap out of me. The other thing is that my footer is now part of my sidebar, and try as I might, I haven't been able to get it to move back to the bottom.
The good news is that I can post once again, the bad news is I lost 3 hours that could've been spent writing posts (or sleeping!) of something else.
Anyone with extensive Blogger code experience is welcome to give me some pointers. I appreciate that Blogger is free, but sometimes you get what you pay for.
So if you blog, do the smart thing and archive your code. Do it now. Really.
For those on a PC you can just copy and paste your template into Notepad and then save it on your hard drive. Save the file with a name like "RLserver 6-9-06" so that you can tell how old your saved copy is. I should be doing this at least every other week, and will now be more disciplined about it (after I get my code fixed).
Related Tags: Blogger, Archive code, Back-up, Google, Google AdSense, AdSense, Wasted time, Sleep, Frustration
3 comments:
It's not even an issue of smartness for me, because I KNEW BETTER and was still the moron. It's like intentionally peeing on an electric fence.
Lobster Boy
This may or may not make sense, but when I did this as a newb I pulled out my blogroll and all the special features (map, clock, chicklet, blah blah blah) and saved that code, then went to the section where you choose your blog template and switched to a different one. I saved the change and then went back to my old template style and then inserted all my customizations. It might be the easier way to do it than comb through all that code.
nice to see you back in action
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