lesson

Learn about the 'comedy of errors' that had my Tarot Card Shop website up and down like a yo-yo, and how they could be avoided.

I wouldn't be suprised if Google just stops indexing me altogether!  It is so infuriating, all the little problems I am having - and knowing most of them are my own fault.

1)  Shopping Cart Software is good provided you keep it up to date.  Good in theory, but I made some changes to the shopping cart so that it would work better, so was hesitant to apply security patches because I did not know how it would affect my changes.  So there was a security hole in my website, and a hacker found it, leading me to take the drastic action of taking the website down to keep the site safe.  Would loosing my changes and just updating to the latest security patch been smarter? - result, a holding page, which Google quickly indexed and replaced the actual content with (of course when I got a site up again, google was not so quick off the mark!)Possibly, I should have updated the site with the latest security patch, and keep running while I built my new site, but I just lost faith in the security of the cart.

2) I moved to a new server, because it was a better platform - this was the only unforseen holdup - my hosting provider has lots of things on, and it took more time than I would have liked, and DNS Errors compounded things.  Google indexes the problem yet again.

Beyond my control - maybe if I hadn't moved servers...

3) During the server move debarkle, I missed a domain name renewal notice for my primary domain name.

Kinda beyond my control, but really I should keep these important renewal dates in my calendar.  I'm thinking about making calendar entries for renewals whenever I register things from now on.
4)  As I start registering new accounts in ready for marketing efforts, I wonder why I'm not getting any email, and discover my domain name has expired...  Site down - yet again.

This is just an effect of not keeping track of my domain name expiration.

5)  This is where I am now.  Desparately waiting for my domain name to become active again.  Of course, my SSL Certificate is due for renewal soon, my domain name isn't active, and I'll probably miss the renewal email for that.

The SSL is avoidable, I know about it, and there is no excuse for it to become an issue.

Lessons learnt:

1)  Keep an eye on any security releases for any of the software you use to run your business.  Preventative Maintenance.

2)  Record in my calendar notification of any renewal events, about a week before it is due.

3) Act on any notification events immediately - leave it till later, and it will be forgotten till it's to late.