If you’ve visited the site over the last few days, you undoubtedly experienced a disconcerting problem.  All you saw was a blank page.

I completed updates on the site and server last week.  Although both performed flawlessly for me afterward and everything tested A-OK, somewhere along the road I had an accident and didn’t know it.

You see, even while others could see only a blank white slate when trying to view the front page, my laptop continued showing me the site just as it should have been.  Because of that, I went right on posting and doing my thing without ever realizing something had gone wrong.

Then Wayne sent me an e-mail to let me know he couldn’t see anything.  As his message arrived on the same day I implemented a blocking system to stop the thievery of my site that was taking place, I logically yet illogically assumed the two matters were related.  I removed the blocks and considered it an issue to be resolved later.

But the protection scheme had nothing whatsoever to do with the issue.

When I arrived home from work and realized Wayne still couldn’t see the site even with the blocks removed, I had it tested by xocobra.  With him on the phone and me manhandling the site and server, I eventually was able to resolve the problem.

Oh, and did I mention the biggest surprise?  No, not yet.

Although the site worked flawlessly from my laptop, this evening I discovered it wouldn’t work from my desktop.  This made clear one very important fact: the problem had nothing to do with the anti-theft mechanisms I had put into place.  All of my home computers are behind a hardware firewall.  That means they all access the internet using the same host name and IP address.  If I had mistakenly disabled access for the world at large, it would not have impacted the desktop since it would access the site using precisely the same methodology as the laptop.

Go figure!

I worked with xocobra on the phone as I went through various troubleshooting steps on the server itself, and then on the site.  When he eventually could see it, so could my desktop.

I saw an increase in traffic on the site almost immediately.  I’d guess I’ve been hiding from the whole of the intertubes for a few days.  When Pam mentioned the issue in her comment today, I knew I’d really turned the site into a ghost town without realizing it.

Now I know approximately where the problem was.  How it happened is another thing entirely.

Needless to say, I’ll be retrying the upgrade this evening and will reverse it if I run into the same hiccup.  If I don’t, however, that means I fat fingered something originally.

My claims to perfection notwithstanding, I do intentionally make a mistake once or twice per year just so people don’t get too jealous of me.  Consider this the first for 2007.  And probably not the last.