Kay Elam Writes

For those of us who grew up without computers, who learned to type instead of keyboard, the world of computers, and all that comes with it, is new.

I guess I’ve been lucky I’ve managed as well as I have, but I got humbled on Monday. I was on the blog to respond to some comments that had come in over the weekend, and when I hit “comments” I got a 400 Error. I think it was Will Robinson’s robot from Lost in Space that said, “That does not compute,” and I knew exactly what it meant.

What the heck is a “400 error” anyway? The first thing I did was take a deep breathe and assure myself I could figure this out. Then I did what any intelligent and rational person would do. I Googled it.

According to Google, 400 errors are “low-level problems in the client or the Web server or both. 95% of the time this is because of a problem in the client side.” Well, duh. Of course it was on my side, but what do they mean by low-level? This was my blog they were talking about!

I tried to trouble-shoot using the guidelines I found online as well as some creative problem solving of my own. Nothing worked. Comments couldn’t be left on any of my blogs so I had to get this fixed!

After Google, I didn’t know where to turn. I e-mailed customer support at Blue Hole, my webhosting site as a starting place. Lucky guess! First, they told me to check my comment plug-in. I actually do know what a plug-in is (well, sort of) and knew where to look for it. However, there didn’t appear to be a plug-in for comments. Just in case I uninstalled each of my plug ins, checked my blog, then reinstalled. That wasn’t it. After my second e-mail to Blue Hole, I was told it was a script error and they gave me the correct script. They did not, however, tell me exactly where to put the script so I spent hours going over and over the admin site trying to figure this out.

After reading some online forums, I decided it might be my theme (background) so I started experimenting with changing it, which was actually kind of fun. But it didn’t solve the issue. I left a question on the general forum for Word Press, the software I used to create my blog but no one responded. I was so desperate, I clicked on the HTML tab which I try to stay away from because it scares the bejesus out of me.

Tuesday was a new day and I could look at the problem with fresh eyes, though it was the end of the day before I could get back to it. If it had been a snake it would’ve bitten me, but it wasn’t thank goodness, ‘cause I’m terrified by the creatures. I know, I know most are “our friends” and are more afraid of me than I am of them, but I don’t care, they aren’t in my network of friends. Anyway, when I looked at the Permalink on my blog, right smack dab in front of me, was the incorrect code Blue Hole had identified more than twenty-four hours earlier. From all of my surfing on the administrative site on Monday, I knew what Permalinks were. What I mean is I knew where to find them so I went in and changed the code to the correct one. Somehow the format had been changed from what it should have been to something custom.

I’d found during my on my blog research three or four people (?) who were listed as the administrator other than me. I changed their statuses and also changed their passwords just in case one of them might have been the culprit. I’ll be checking on that frequently—if I can figure out how to get back there.

Have a good one.

~Kay

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