WordPress is undoubtedly out of box, search engine optimized platform for blogging (very much user friendly too that any common man can start blogging in a few minutes) given the cross linking inside the blog but it also has as many flaws as advantages. For example, it displays a same page for a URL with and without a trailing slash, i.e., http//mtherald.com/blog/importance-of-backing-up-blog-regularly/ is one and the same as http//mtherald.com/blog/importance-of-backing-up-blog-regularly. Unfortunately, Google sees this as two different pages with same content, the result - getting penalized for duplicate content, dumping the page into supplemental jail (check out my other activities to get off the supplemental jail and the secrets of successful blogging). Similar is the case with URLs with and without www. On this blog, I tried to rectify these with the aid of WordPress-no-www plugin, enforce-www plugin, objection redirection plugin and WordPress-www-redirect plugin but all vain efforts so far on this blog. The permalink redirect plugin too was throwing blank screen. Though I restricted Google bot to not index the URLs with www in the webmaster console, it is still indexing some pages with www and hence I had no other go than to fix it up by any known means. The other option was to write some rules in .htaccess file (mod_rewrite). Hence while trying to do that as per directive of ultimate .htaccess by Andy Beard and per directives of no-www.org to make this blog as class B and per Daily Blog Tips on 301 redirect, the codes were not giving me the intended results but was adding index.php in the URLs thereby making the situation more worse. In this process, I tried meddling the code myself without knowing the potential danger that at one point in time, it became unable to access the administrator dashboard of this blog and in a few minutes the whole blog itself. Unluckily, Yahoo hosting (on which I am) provides access to only write on the .htaccess file but not replace the whole file in case of emergency like this. Same thing happened couple of hours before that when I just touched some codes in phpMyAdmin/MySQL.

One way or the other, I landed in trouble dumping all the posts until this time in the bin. The blog was blacked out for a couple of hours (even my RSS readers might have noted that) that really sweated me out. This insists the necessity of backing up blogs regularly especially those with thousands of posts and those which generate thousands of dollars though I’ve been lazy backing up this blog on a regular basis to come handy in case of emergencies like this. Luckily, I did a backup of this blog couple of hours before touching those codes, hence was able to retrieve the blog back into action with only minor damages (I couldn’t save the comments until now, all comments got wiped out). Thanks to Daily Blog Tips’ advice on backing up a blog.

Though I was unable to achieve the intention of a 301 redirect for missing trailing slashes and to drop www, I got a good lesson from this incident, i.e., it is best to avoid twisting those files, viz., .htaccess and MySQL without thorough knowledge in coding, that even a minute change such as adding or removing a single dot dumps your blog in trouble. It is highly advisable to back up your blog at least once in a week though you’re not able to do it on a daily basis to bail you out of emergencies like this or if the server crashes out or if there is a hacking attempt on your blog.

I restricted Google bot to not index URLs without a trailing slash by making some changes in robots.txt though it is not advisable as I would lose the link benefits coming from other sites to this blog without a trailing slash in the URLs, but I have no other go. I’m yet to find a solution for non-www options. I’ve become more of a Problogger than a medical transcriptionist nowadays, isn’t it?

PS:

• From WordPress 2.3 onwards, the canonical URL redirect (trailing slash and www problem) has been fixed. Since Yahoo hosting is using outdated WordPress version, this cannot be fixed as long as Yahoo does not upgrade WordPress and you cannot upgrade on your own as it knocks down the blog itself.
• I had to move out of Yahoo Hosting especially because of this, the bugs prevailed in the outdated version of WordPress provided by Yahoo and due to succumbing to multiple hacks because of these bugs. Check about this on “How To Shift A WordPress Blog (To A Reliable, Cheap, Fast Host)“