By

Cognitive Dissonance

I continuously marvel how well the world works considering the staggering level of gross incompetence exhibited by all, myself included. This observation, one I find myself endlessly encountering in an ever changing light and perspective, was never more apparent than while Mrs. Cog and I struggled with web hosting issues over the last two weeks.

Initially we were but one of several thousand who were suffering a similar fate, an intermittent website at best and error messages at worst. Calling customer service at our web hosting company to ask for resolution or just for some basic information came down to calling three times within a few hours, then averaging the answers to try to determine what was going on and when it would all end.

By the middle of week two, after we were told the problems had been resolved for all but the ‘biggest’ websites, we began to research moving our website to another hosting company. We are grateful for the information and help several TwoIceFloes members gave us as we waded through the maze of hosting companies looking to charge our credit card. While there is no such thing as bad information, just misunderstood or misinterpreted information, ultimately Mrs. Cog and I had to rely upon gut instinct and intuition. I must say it was rather fitting considering I often write about looking within to find the answers.

In the end we decided to dance one more time with the devil we knew rather than wade into what could have been a new and much more complicated nightmare. Mrs. Cog has pieced together TwoIceFloes with chewing gum and baling wire along with sheer determination, patching together 42 WordPress plug-ins to produce a truly beautiful and functional Internet destination.

We have constantly been told what we have produced is simply impossible, that no one can use this many plug-ins on a WordPress platform and expect it all to work together, let alone work well. And to some extent this extreme complexity, especially for a WordPress website, was contributing to our problems. As Captain Kirk would bellow to Scotty down in Enterprise engineering, we needed more power and some hosting company tender loving care since we have been in well over our heads from the very beginning. They offered us ‘managed’ hosting designed specifically for large WordPress sites and we decided to gamble one more time.

Two days ago we ‘migrated’ the website to a different server with the same hosting company, one designed to more efficiently handle our difficult baby while providing the power we needed. While doing so involved more expense, and the changeover was not without problems and a few missed heart beats as various functionalities suddenly disappeared, all in all we are very pleased with the results. Mrs. Cog and I are back and better than ever, with greater page loading speed and a much more stable website to boot.

While it is never a good time to experience severe problems, there are better times and worse times to deal with complex issues. Ultimately we would rather learn our lessons now, while we are still toddling around and learning the lay of the land, than to be smacked in the face later when we have deluded ourselves into thinking we know what the hell we’re doing.

Thank you TwoIceFloes members and guests for your patience as we sorted through our second year teething problems.

Mr. and Mrs. Cognitive Dissonance

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