I decided to dump my old hosting site and shack up with the good folks at Media Temple. While all the posts made the transition, the comments, sadly, did not. But they were getting lost or screwed up with all the “upgrades” during the past year anyway so……
Please email me if you find any major screwups! Thanks for your patience! I will put up a new post in a couple of days!
Waiter
Good move… things look more… well… like it belongs to a successful author!!!! Best of everythign to you Waiter!
SHIT! ALL the comments are GONE?????? That SUCKS big time Waiter!
Some of the comments were WELL worth reading (and retaining!). No way to get them back? No backups were kept? What about in the future? Should we even bother to leave comments–won’t they just disappear again in the future? I don’t mean to be a jerk Waiter–but those comments were IMPORTANT–part of the fun was reading what you had to say but then reading what your readership had to say in response was the icing on the cake…..
Just one very tiny “peeve”:
Font types like Times New Roman are not very screen friendly. A “cleaner” font type – like Arial or Verdana (without those little legs and curls) are a lot easier on the eyes when we are reading on a screen. Besides… In my humble opinion, they look a lot better 😉
PS – Cant wait to read your book!
Blah blah… sans serif…. I think that the serif font looks nice (even though I usually prefer Arial), I also am quite fond of the page breaks! Very spiffy.
Always a fan, Waiter… always a fan.
Book Antiqua is the best.
Actually, TNR is MUCH more screen friendly than Arial. The serifs give the eyes more visual cues as to what the letters are.
And whoever made a sans serif font the default for computers was a jackass, as there is no visual difference in Arial between a 1 and a l.
Patricia, try changing your browser preferences. If the font of a site is not set, then you will get whatever your browser says is the default. Try changing yours to something nice, like Arial.
Dude, comments kept were getting lost anyway. I had to bite the bullet and make a move. I doubt we’ll see any major data losses again.
Yes, the comments were great! I hope everyone keeps adding their two cents!
The one thing we can count on in life IS change.
Best to you waiter, looking forward to the book.
The banner up top is much nicer, no more white “hidden” writing up there that (at least on my computer) tended to not load in the right place and cut out part of the logo. Looks great Waiter! Congrats and good luck with the book!
also may just be being picky (or again my computer) but you’ve got a floaty “o” beside the “P” in Pages on the right-navigation list… anyone else?
The the little ‘o’ next the P in Pages is the result of an empty list element under the Pages header.
pleasant!
Waiter,
You change webhosting companies way too often.
I am still using the same company I found in 1997 and they do a great job.
,dave
All you folks who are being so picky try to remember one little fact: This ain’t YOUR blog! It belongs to The Waiter!
If you had better luck in finding the right hosting server the first time more power to you. Others aren’t quite as lucky as you are.
I know other blogs that started out just fine and had to switch hosts repeatedly to cope with problems that cropped up with increased readership and usage. Nobody is clairvoyant enough to forsee all the potential pitfalls that can appear when least expected. If your blog, like mine, is less popular than Waiterrant or, say Idolbloglive, then you won’t experience the problems these blogowners have had to face. Count your blessings and quit complaining.
Waiter, you do an excellent job with this site and I wish you all the best in the future.
Waiter, Good luck in the new spot.
Can’t wait to read your book.
By the way, your writing is wonderful no matter what the font.
I’m with NR. I really enjoy the banter among us in the replies.
Guess we could go in and write new ones ???
Smaller font?
You can recover the comments using Google’s cache of old waiterrant posts.
(tinyurl for easy posting!)
Change is Good…Obama loves ya
Ok, so the comments may have gone, the posts matter, but also it’s going forward to the future that matters more.
Finding a decent hosting company is always difficult and if you’re with the same hosting company since the dawn of time then you’re probably either paying too much or not using it much. Freedom to migrate is the essence of customer choice, as I imagine waiters know!
Keep on scribbling waiter.
Bob
Waiter,
I’ve been a lurker for awhile, and I really enjoy the blog. It’s sad to hear you say all the comments are gone, especially when they really aren’t. Transferring posts and comments from one database to another is truly a trivial job. I don’t know if you’re doing this yourself or you’ve had someone else do it for you. If you’re paying someone to screw you like this, they should be fired or sued yesterday.
Even if your former host says your database is gone, you still have options for recovering the data. I doubt there is a problem with the data though– there was probably just a glitch when importing the posts and comments into the new WordPress installation.
Seriously Waiter, contact me at the email address on this comment and I will help you out right away. I can’t bear to see this happen to you for the want of a smidgen of technical expertise.
–David.
You might be able to salvage some comments from google cache or similar? Also, I think I’ve noticed in the past that your old site before waiterrant.net is still up, so you could probably copy comments across from there. Hope it helps.
I actually have a WordPress file that has all the comments in it but it’s from an outdated version of WP. I’ll try and get someone to play with it in future. Right now, however, I was just concerned with getting all my posts back up!
Hi Waiter,
I’m happy you got all your posts back up, but I’m also disappointed that the comments are no longer there to read. To me, it’s like someone took a loved book and tore out every other page. I hope you will try and get them back up where they belong.
Patti
Way to go Waiter. Your last hosting company was a joke. You were right to “dump” them. Doesn’t anyone here remember all the comments and posts that kept disappearing? The messed up formatting? The downtime? Waiter apologizing for all the problems? I do. I just hope your new server is less expesivne than your old one. I’m sure you were getting hosed on fees.
I read and have read your blog for quite sometime now. It renders fine – even on my iPhone – I do see the floating “0” and it is the result of an empty list under the page list. Also see the corrected logo – no more white letters. Even with the aforementioned errors you have an awesome blog, I feel certain you will work out any design kinks in time. Its about content any way and you could ignore design completely and it would still be well worth the time spent reading. Great job waiter! Keep it up.
Where’s the tip jar?
I just spend the two entire days, reading yr blog from day 1…. i will buy yr book..congrats..
U r very insightful…Good luck….
nice change. already place my order for the book. can’t wait to read it.
The comments were an important part of this site. It feels like it is half a site without them. How are the sales of your book?
hate the font
What was the font on the old site?
Looking good, waiter!
x
Well, the site looks much better so far. And I wouldn’t stress too much about the comments. Waiterrant users are whiny and opinionated. I’m sure we’ll leave plenty more.
Bite us Rusty
i almost vomited when your site was gone. i flashed to a life where The Waiter didn’t exist, and i weeped silently in the corner. i’m so glad you’re back.
Well, the font looks really wonky to me, even when I adjust the text zoom (using Firefox 3 Beta 5). Not sure if it’s a browser thing or a CSS thing, but it’s kind of blurry and hard to read, as if you just can’t quite get your eyes in focus.
Other than that, good to have you back!
The site appears in sans-serif for me. In fact, it’s in the browser default font (Firefox, Ubuntu 8.04).
Looks good to me (but then I’m not a designer so what do I know?)
I hate the font so much.
Good luck—looking forward to seeing more of your stories!
I’m sure you know, but your RSS is messing up 🙂
I’m just glad you’re back… I was worried the other day when your site didn’t come up.
font schmont……carry on…..
Cool! I never knew I could configure my own settings to over-ride font selection on web pages. An excellent discovery which I have just successfully applied to turn yours into Times Roman in a slightly larger size which seems to suit my change-resistant eyes just fine 🙂
In Firefox, all I did was click “Tools/Options/Advanced” and there I was.
Thanks very much for keeping this techno-dinosaur on her toes here Waiter Rant Readers.
Oh, and Waiter…tonight when we were out with friends and I realized the host had sadly under-tipped our server, I excused myself to go to the ladies’ room, and handed off a small supplement for her at the hostess station. All thanks to you!
Just think of all the servers whose bottom line has benefited from the enlightenment we readers receive from you!
🙂
I can’t wait for someone to go back and add “First!” to all of the comments
All previous comments all lost?
I am bummed, man! Not about the comments in general, but about my comments. Though few, they were brilliant, trenchant, and erudite. You shoulda seen ’em.
Alas, to paraphrase Keats, Here writes one whose previous comments might as well have been writ in water.
not liking the comments layout. prefer the old one
Well that’s not cool about the comments, but that’s life. I really like the new design. Like a prior poster said, it looks more like what a successful author should have. I like the break image in between posts, very clean and crisp!
Good move!
I just commented… but is there any way that you can link your Waiter Rant logo back to the home page? Especially from the comment pages, it would make things easier if we could just click on your Waiter Rant logo and we were brought back to the other page, instead of having to click ‘back’.
Oh how sad. Now all of the ass-lickers who blow smoke up the Waiter’s ass will have to do so all over again. I’ll get the ball rolling!
“Waiter, I totally want to bear your children – please put your wang inside me!”
“Waiter, I’ve been a huge fan for ever and ever and ever, and I love you, and I think you’re great, and I think you’re awesome, and I love your writing, and I love everything about you! I know that 45 people just wrote the same thing, but I know that it’ll mean something different if it just comes from me.”
“Waiter, I’m a former waitron and I agree with everything you just said! I have no formalized thought process of my own, so I defer to your aw-shucks prose”
Waiter, how poignant. I’m such a pussy I’m shedding tears right now!”
“Waiter, wow – you have a book coming out? That’s so great. Now I get to read your bullshitting *offline* too!”
“Waiter, you write such great stories, and I’m totally psyched to believe that every single one is true without any sort of verification whatsoever!”
“Waiter, will you include me in your book if I lick your rear iris enough with my obsequious comments?”
Whatever. Blah blah blah. Jackasses.
Hi there waiter,
I have to say, your hosting switch didnt please me all that much… my point is I just discovered your blog on friday and ended up printing about 10 pages of your “rants” to read in the subway. When i got home desperate for more… I was screwed up and coudnt wait for your website to open again.
Thank you for your insight into a waiters life and I promise – from now on I will be more considerate when eating out in a fine restaurants 🙂
I think the posts are more important than the comments. 🙂
I like the new look, Waiter
Check out the “Way Back Machine” —> it keeps all the old web pages. It’s a kind of history of the internet. You can check out the way a web site looked a long time ago.
Dennis
San Antonio
Waiter, waiter: your Atom feed has blank title and subtitle elements (view source and see the top few lines.) That means it disappears in my list of feeds under my feed reader, and I can’t necessarily tell when there’s new content.
I like the new formats fine; san serif’s actually more readable than Times if you 1) keep the line length short and 2) allow plenty of leading. Both of which you’ve done.
@smallbeds
The Atom feed thing is because there isn’t any WordPress blog title set.
As for the comments, was there any backup of the SQL database that your web guy could use? D:
Oops, forgot to mention in the last comment:
If there isn’t a blog title because you don’t want the text covering up the logo, you can just go into the theme’s header.php, search for, and remove from the header section.
Hey Waiter,
I love your new website. I really enjoy reading your comments, they are the best. Don’t let these negative comments get you down. People hate change and naturally want things to remain as they always have. Just keep it how YOU want it and the rest of us will adjust!
With respect,
Heather
i am loving the new page. It looks much cleaner, and much classier. ya know like a good restaurant, lol. I like the new page!
Yay! 60th!!!
Waiter – you are now missing the title tag on your home page. This is not good for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it makes your feed on iGoogle or my.yahoo not have a title.
Keep the good ol font waiter. That was easy on the eyes. And wats those 2 red lines on sideframe doin other than lookin bad?
Puhhhhllllleeeezzzz, revert to the old format waiter.
1) Your RSS feed has a blank title (Cos your blog has no name yet)
2) Clicking the top banner should lead you home
3) You shouldn’t lose any comments..you moved from wordpress to wordpress.
Your banner (masthead) is not aligned.
Waiter! you haven’t actually written anything since March 27th!
Sounds like drangle has a lot of unresolved issues. Don’t worry drangle, we love you too.
Hey, Waiter!
The site looks great! Sorry to hear about the comments getting lost, but here’s hoping the new web hosting works out better.
One little tiny suggestion… I’m pretty sure (unless I’m going crazy, which is highly possible) the newest post used to show up on top, and now that does not seem to be the case. Could that be fixed?
Keep up the great writing! I can’t wait for the book!!!
The font on the old site was “font-family: ‘Lucida Grande’, Verdana, Arial, Sans-Serif;” which is the default font used by the Kubrick WordPress theme.
Okay, your codes aren’t obvious – please provide an example of each or a preview of the planned post …
BUMMER
Do you mean to tell me that my witty, pithy comments from posts past didn’t make it to the new site? Waiter, that was some of my best writing. I’m devastated. I have to have an ice cream sandwich.
Damn.
~C~
Great post as always!Hope I don’t get nightmares from all the bad waiter memories it stirred up.What the heck is the point of decaff-expresso? I’m in Europe amd the waitpeople here don’t have to contend with such nonsense.I can hear the question,”Are you sure this is decaf?”
Sorry,I posted in the wrong place!
You were wise to switch to Media Temple. They host a number of sites for me and I’ve been nothing but happy with them. Can’t wait for the book. Take care.
Media temple’s been working fine for me, too, except for frequent business-hours slowdowns their servers seem to be getting, here and there. phpbb code is especially affected.
They’re getting popular very quickly, which could either spell doom or more success –depending on how they handle it. We’ll see!
The hosting price/features are great, though. I guess you get what you pay for!
“Font types like Times New Roman are not very screen friendly. A “cleaner” font type – like Arial or Verdana (without those little legs and curls) are a lot easier on the eyes when we are reading on a screen.”
What are you talking about? What else would you be reading it on besides a screen? Do you print out every page you go to and look at it on paper?
If you look at Arial vs Times New Roman in a word editor, you will see that you have them backwards. In Arial, an uppercase “I” looks the same as a lowercase “L”.
Quit making stuff up.
I know, I know, you just changed hosting companies. If you ever do decide to change, though, I’d recommend bluehost.com. Besides the fact that they’re less than half the cost of MT and give you (literally) a few hundred times more storage, bandwidth and features, their CEO, Matt Heaton, has a blog that sold me on using him for my service just based on his views of customer service. I don’t have a dog in the fight, it’s just what I’ve found.
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oohh that explains the lack of comments in the earlier posts.
can anyone tell me the theme of this book ?
my email is kil.stephanie@yahoo.com
you see I read your book, but I can’t find the theme to it.
Change is good, as long as you don’t get it as a tip.
Sorry, but I couldn’t help but add a smily face. 🙂