It is with no little sadness that it becomes my duty to report the sad demise of my Weebly-hosted website, 'Beyond The Barred Window', in fact I am thoroughly miserable about it! That website had come to mean the world to me - and it had been all going so well! Then a couple of days ago I started up another secondary or annex site specifically to house the artwork and writings of Roger Benson (of whom regular readers of this blog will have heard much before) linked to the main website in various ways. And when I finally went to bed, having been up half the night lovingly working away on the new site and uploading all manner of Roger Benson goodies, everything was working wonderfully well - I tucked myself up with a smile on my face and feeling rather smug. But that smile wasn't destined to last long!
I woke up the next morning (yesterday) to find not only had the new site vanished - all links to it reporting 'error 404, (basically 'page doesn't exist) - but the main 'Beyond The Barred Window' website had also vanished, some 50-odd pages, sections and sub sections. In short both my lovingly crafted websites had ceased to exist, as totally as if they'd never been. As if to rub salt in the wounds, I can't log in to the Weebly website creation and tool box site either - I'm locked out, my password not recognised!!!
Having dedicated several months of my life to the site, I felt - I feel - utterly powerless. Of course I have emailed Weebly technical support, but I am not holding my breath; this has happened to other folk, it turns out, and the response from Weebly tends to be a figerative virtual shrugging of the shoulders. In fact from what I have read on the Internet while searching for a solution / explanation the consensus seems to be that the best way of making contact with the Weebly technical support team is in through Facebook - and so I have tried that route too, so how true that consensus is remains to be seen.
If I have infringed Weebly's terms and conditions or created some (presumably new) particularly offensive content - and had I simply been informed / warned of it by email or whatever - of course I would have removed the offending sections / content and left the remainder as is, publishing the offending material elsewhere. But I have a feeling no human was involved in this...in this...wanton destruction. I fear that what has happened is that I have fallen victim to some sort of automatic anti-spamming software (as I have come across others discussing on a forum). And this does seem the most likely explanation considering the way in which my website's disappearance so neatly coincides with my having created that second, annex, site and then set up those links between the two sites, through which I intended to provide a seamless experience to the browsing visitor (just a matter of hours previously).
By for now - I'm off down the pub; check out Twitter or Facebook to find out where, if you are in central London and fancy joining me for a pint or ten. Then, later, I'll be at The Avenue Gallery in St James's Street at an exhibition of Sam Toff's oft-humorous work (by invitation only - sorry!) Champagne and other goodies I dare say! But tomorrow! Ah, tomorrow!
Tomorrow I start work on building a brand new website - but very much NOT hosted by Weebly!!! And hopefully, even as we speak Roger Benson is sending me more of his work for inclusion - my plan is for both he and my collaborator, Angela Fox, to have their own dedicated sections, with 'keys to the door' to allow each to edit and add to their own sections independent of me, if that is possible. The latter aspect is why I set up a whole new site specifically for Roger Benson's work - which seems to have been what caused all the trouble... Oh well... Cheers!