I started an e-commerce website for my new shop selling my homemade lip balms, and I started the site in a sub directory of my hosting account (which is called public_html) like all of my other sites. However, in order to get the SSL certificate (secure site) I had to make that domain the primary domain for the account. The primary domain by default lives directly in the public_html directory... which means that the subfolders of the domain are mixed in with the folders that contain all of my other domains...and also, all of my other domains' content would show up as subfolders of my shop! What a messy nightmare!

So I kept the shop in a subfolder and used something called mod_rewrite in a file called .htaccess to redirect things so it still worked. Except it didn't...several things were wonky. Coupons didn't work, gift certificates were broken, a few things weren't working right with some of my payment modules... And out turned out the mod_rewrite was the problem.

So I decided to split it into two hosting accounts, one for the shop and one for the rest. The obvious thing would be to move the shop to the new account, but it turns out that they won't transfer the SSL certificate (which costs money) to another account. That meant that I had to move all three other domains to the new account.

So I zipped up all the folders, backed up all the databases, downloaded all the backups to my home computer and started rebuilding. 23 domains. 17 mySQL databases. 10 installations of Textpattern, 4 Gallery installations (HUGE downloads/uploads) and more... Everything had hardcoded file paths that needed to be updated, configuration files that needed to be changed, database information that needed to be adjusted to the new account's info...

It was so much work. It took hours and hours. Some of my databases were too large to import into the new account and so I spent at least an hour on the phone with tech support... Then when all of that was in place it was time to un-assign the domain names from the old account what assign them to the new account. The moment of truth... Would the sites work? Would they be broken? Misconfigured? Did I miss a line somewhere that needed to be changed?

Most of them went smoothly. A few had works where I didn't realize a path was hardcoded into a page or a template file, etc., but I got everything working in the end except for two domains that were "stuck" and wouldn't assign to the new account. But it was 4am and I decided to sleep on it and see if it worked in the morning.

It didn't. Back on the phone with tech support. It turns out the issue was that the domains were about to be renewed and so they were kind of locked. They said they fixed it, but when I got off the phone and tried assigning them again, they still didn't work. So that is where it stands now. I put in a support ticket...now we wait.

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Joyce (Dan's mom) and Jay and I left around 12:30 on Friday to drive up to the cottage in New Hampshire. Dominic and Dan drove up later after Dominic got out of school and Dan got off work. We stopped by Brandeis University, where I work, to pick up my laptop from the help desk where they were trying to figure out why it was running so slowly. It was pretty much on the way... we just took the Mass Pike to I-95, which is the exit for Brandeis, then afterward got back on I-95 and took that up to New Hampshire, and cut acoss Rte 16 for almost the rest of the way. (Usually when going from our house we take I-495 to I-95 to Rte 16, but this worked well because of needing to pick up my laptop.)

The drive was uneventful, but we were a little disappointed at the leaves. They hadn't changed as much as we'd hoped. We got to the cottage around 4pm and I showed them around and we got settled in. Dan and Dominic arrived later, around 7:30pm if I remember correctly. They'd hit stopped traffic (overturned tractor trailor, from what they said) and gotten delayed by quite a lot. Dominic drove the first part, but when they stopped to eat, they switched and Dan drove the rest of the way. Friday night got into the 30s overnight and we were glad for our electric blankets. We had a fire going most of the evening and again in the morning.

On Saturday we drove into North Conway and at breakfast at The Blueberry Muffin, then went shopping at the L.L.Bean outlet store and hit up the Bavarian Chocolate Haus, then we went to the grocery store and back home. It was warm--it got up to 81, actually--and overnight it only got into the 50s. It was a beautiful day, and it happened to be Joyce's 60th birthday. We had some birthday cake that I'd made on Wednesday (we'd had some on Wednesday along with candles and singing and so on, while the cake was freshest).

On Sunday we made eggs for breakfast and then went on a kayak trip from the lake to a nearby pond through what we call "the inlet" which is a long, winding wetlands filled with water grasses and lily pads. We had to cross over a beaver dam, though we were able to scoot over it without having to get out of the kayaks. It was another warm day. Warm enough

At the pond, we walked around on the beach and saw the ruins of the lead mine that used to be there. Joyce took a lot of pictures. That evening the neighbors, Ted and Kathy, took us out on their boat (our boat had already been stored for the season and our dock pulled out of the water) for a sunset cruise with wine and snacks. It was great to be able to show Joyce and Jay the lake from the water, as it gives a much better feel for the size and shape of the lake, and lets you see a lot more of the houses around the lakefront.

Monday morning, Joyce and Jay helped us with the heavy stuff involved in closing up the cottage, like putting the kayaks in the shed (which is all the way up past the cottage and up the driveway by the street--doesn't make sense, but that's where it was built) and moving the porch furniture inside. We stripped all the beds and washed the linens and towels and ran the dishwasher. We said goodbye to Joyce and Jay and they left to go to Bar Harbor in Acadia National Park in Maine. It was supposed to be a 4-5 hour drive so they wanted to get an early start.

Dan and Dominic and I finished closing up the cottage and hit the road around 3pm or maybe 3:30... or I may be misremembering. We got about 30 minutes down the road before realizing we'd left the cake and cake pan behind! If it had just been the pan (clean) it wouldn't have been a big deal, but nobody is going to be back in the cottage again until next June and having a rotting cake there would be bad. Plus it might attract mice, which have been a problem in the past. Also, we have several birthdays between now and then that it would be nice to have the pan for; it's one with a raised plastic cover and a handle, so you don't have to put aluminum foil over the cake, and no frosting gets stuck to the lid.

Soooooo we turned around and drove back. Dominic was driving. We got the cake. re-armed the burglar alarm, and headed out again, This time we stopped at Subway and got sandwiches for the two of them. I wasn't hungry, so I drove while they ate. After they finished eating, I handed the driving back over to Dominic. He did very well. He's getting less scared of interstates and more used to changing lanes and checking his blind spots and so on. I'm very proud of his progress.

It was dark when we got home. Dominic painted his Warhammer 40,000 miniatures some before we told him to take his shower and go to bed. Dan and I watched something on the TiVo--I don't remember what--then Dan went to bed.

Back at the beginning of this post I mentioned that I'd taken my laptop to the help desk to see if they could figure out why it was running so slowly. They didn't find any viruses on it but recommended I reinstall or upgrade Windows. That would mean reinstalling all of my programs, which would be problematic for a few things, like for example the Adobe software that I split with Joyce--the license allows you to have it installed on two computers, so it's on my laptop and one of her machines, but she has the discs, down in Atlanta. And she won't even be back in Atlanta until next weekend to send them up to our house.

Well, I booted up my computer and went to go into Photoshop as I have a lot of work to do there while I'm in the process of revamping my CafePress shops. It wouldn't open. It gave me some mysterious numerical error and said I had to reboot my computer. I did so. I got the same error. I got that error for every single Adobe product that I had installed. Ack! So I figured all is not lost--I have 25 days left on a trial of Paint Shop Pro (some of my older files are in .psp format which Photoshop won't open) so I launched that.

And got an error saying that I had to reinstall from my source file. ARG! I reinstalled it (fortunately I still had the installer--this is while we were in New Hampshire and there was no internet connection because my mom shuts off and returns the cable equipment at the end of each summer) and it tried to launch, but it got hung doing something like "initializing palettes" or somesuch. It hung like that for a couple of hours and finally I gave up and turned off the computer.

Tuesday morning I brought the laptop back to the help desk and told them the problem. They were able to install some patch of some sort that fixed the Adobe problem, so I got that stuff running again, but I still can't get Paint Shop Pro to launch, which is a problem since I still need to convert many files into Photoshop readable files. Stupid computer. Stupid help desk. *kicks table*.

Anyway, it was a great weekend other than that computer troubles. The weather was perfect and it was so nice having Joyce and Jay up there with us. They really enjoyed it, too. They fly home to Atlanta on Saturday, so they're coming back to our house Friday and spending one more night with us before flying out.

Tomorrow morning I get to go redo that driving trial by Liberty Mutual, assuming that the equipment cooperates, and assuming it isn't raining too hard. They just called me to tell me they'd call me in the morning to let me know whether I should come in or reschedule, based on the weather. Another $60! Well, $70 if I don't make any mistakes. You get a $10 bonus for doing everything perfectly, but they knock a dollar off for every time you hit a cone or your wheels go over the line or you miss the traffic light, or you drive past the time clock while the arrow is in the red instead of the green. But if I am really careful, I could get that bonus :)