inCommunicado - eric eggertson

I’m getting ready to leave my web hosting service because I am having no luck as a WordPress person.

If you don’t understand servers or WordPress, skip this post.

Permissions on the server have been a sore point from day one.

I can FTP files to the server, but when I try to use WordPress’ admin panel, I can’t install plugins or themes.

My queries to the hosting service result in a combination of responses from “we don’t provide support for any applications you put on our server,” to “gee, you should have told us about that two months ago. It’s a database problem that only we can fix.”

The latest go-round was about trying to get WordPress working, or canceling my account.

Now the server has been configured to allow WordPress to create files, etc., but I can’t FTP anything to the server any more.  I have the option of one method or the other.  So how do I change the images in my WordPress theme?  The files are on my computer.  I want them on the server.  Ugh.  Now I’ll have to go through every fricking option on the server control panel and see if there’s a file upload function that doesn’t involve FTP, or that bypasses the permissions.

My ignorance of WordPress is showing. Why can I only post items to the blog through WordPress, or via FTP, but not both?  How can you even use WordPress if you have no control over any of the files on the server, except what WordPress lets you do?  Back to WordPress to go laboriously through every fricking menu option to see where File Upload is hiding.  Will it let me choose where on the server to post something?  What file path do I use?  This is going to be fun…

I’ll keep trying this weekend, but it’s becoming painfully obvious to me that I just don’t have the technology chops to get everything set up properly, troubleshoot everything, and tweak WordPress. I’ve never given up on a piece of software or a technology environment before because I just couldn’t get it to work properly.  Usually I keep slogging, get a geek friend to help me with the tricky parts, and persevere.

But this business of having tech support that plays cat and mouse with what they will and won’t support is just annoying. This site advertises that they have one-step WordPress installation.  Well, installation hasn’t been the problem. It’s doing anything with it that’s the problem.

Argh.