Over the last week, an error message appeared on my site which says:

Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/content/j/o/h/johnsoccernet/html/wp-includes/classes.php on line 92

Though the home page is functioning, all my other pages could not load properly and the link (http://www.soccernetlive.com) is not working.

For more than one year, WordPress has been working fine for me and I cannot fathom why this problem occurred all of a sudden. I have not installed any plugin or tampered with the codes.

And just when I was beginning to think that WordPress is such a stable platform and everything is under control, a technical glitch threw everything into disarray. I realized there is so much more to mastering WordPress if one has to troubleshoot the scripts.

In any case, I proceeded to check with my web hosting company, godaddy, and they simply replied that this error was due to the scripting of the WordPress application while they only handled the installation.

The next thing I did was to announce my arrival in the WordPress forum with a plea for help but it was not a particularly engaging place as nobody came to my assistance.

I tried searching for help on the net and found that this problem was actually quite common (see here and here). Unfortunately, I was never the sharpest tool around when it comes to php – the explanations essentially made no sense to me. I figured by the time I grasp the topic, it could be weeks which is not acceptable. Neither could I ask for help in this blog as I could not post any articles.

Desperate, I finally embarked on the drastic step of reinstalling the entire wordpress application. It was extremely tedious but thankfully, everything worked perfectly.

Just to let my faithful readers know, SoccerNet Live is back and thanks for sticking around.

Have a nice day!

Anyway, thanks to godaddy for replying to my question and restoring the site in a “timely” manner (was it about half a day?) I will be writing soon. Till tomorrow.

Thank you for contacting online support.

I sincerely apologize for any confusion or inconvenience. This problem was due to a known issue. Our network team is aware of this issue and has resolved this issue at this time. If you continue to experience any problems please contact us with the exact details and the steps that we can take to duplicate them so we can further investigate.

Please let us know if we can assist you in any other way.

Sincerely,
Cory P.
Online Support Technician

Long story.. anyway, just to let you in on the hair pulling 36 hours which I had to endure with my web hosting company (godaddy). You see, I envisage a long term commitment to this soccer blog seeing a steady growth of readers over the last 2 months, so with this in mind, I shelled out some money and went ahead to purchase a new 2-year domain renewal and hosting plan in place of the monthly hosting.

I expect the system to be smart enough to let the 2-year web hosting plan (which godaddy prompt us to purchase together with the domain renewal) take immediate effect and void the current arrrangement once the payment is made. Apparently, when it comes to making extra money, the system has no qualms about acting dumb, and persists in deducting from my credit card the monthly hosting fee.

Well, when this issue came to my attention, I emailed the support staff and after waiting for 5 hours, the first reply came but was not helpful… or either I am too stupid, so I fired off another email and the to-and-fro works out to three emails in the end. That is 18 hours later, and I can say the matter was finally resolved.

The new hosting plan takes effect but all the data was lost. Once again, I turn to the pros for advice and this time, the solution came pretty quick but it requires me parting with more money.

Fortunately we can restore your hosting account that you canceled from up to 30 days ago. However it is an additional service, and there is a $150.00 restore fee.

If this is acceptable to you, please provide the following information:

The Customer Number that holds the hosting space.
The last 4 digits of the Credit Card on file for us to charge the fee to.
The precise date and time to restore the account to (up to 30 days back).
What specifically you would like restored, as in, Specific Directories, Databases, etc.
Where you would like the backup restored to, if you would like us to overwrite what is existing already, or if would like the restore placed into a directory in the account.
Any other information we may need to complete a restore for you.

Please let us know if we can help you in any other way.

This is definitely not acceptable, considering that only 30 days of data can be restored for a princely $150. I will have to think of other ways to recover all my previous posts or if anyone has any suggestion, I will be more than happy to hear it out.

Anyway, the case is now closed with godaddy and I hope this little saga has served as a useful lesson for bloggers out there. I wouldn’t blame godaddy as they have been professional enough to refund any outstanding fees and the fact that I have not backup my data over the weeks is also a negligence on my part.

All the posts up to this point of time are lost and I am scrambling to get this blog up and running again. I will try to compile back some of the previous posts in an archive but that will take time. Hopefully, at this time of crisis, my loyal readers will continue to support this blog. Subscribe to my feeds if you want as I will resume posting soon.

By the way, do you know of any person with such experience before? My main concern is to restore everything back as soon as possible. Please share and let me know how you deal with it.

I have to go to sleep now. Been a traumatizing day…