My year started with a little puzzle. The website of a good client, Mascha Hendriks, had stopped working. The web host had upgraded PHP, causing the entire website to give an error message. Contacting the web host, Mascha had some help getting the site working so she had a website to look at again, but some of her content was gone. This included much of her portfolio and all the design, and the navigation was now completely different from what it had been.
Needless to say, Mascha wanted a working website and her portfolio back, so I took a look to see how to best achieve that. Was the content really gone? No, as it turned out. It was all still there, and so was the design. We just had to find a way to retrieve it.
What went into solving Mascha’s problem is a bit involved for me to explain here succinctly, but let it suffice to say that between the two of us—with Mascha having all the answers to my questions about her content and my sleuthing around the innards of her website—everything turned out in her favor.
It was a nice little puzzle that we solved together in a way that worked best for Mascha, and made me happy too. Unfortunately not every problem can be fixed. If the database is corrupted and there is no backup, for example, there isn’t always a solution that will magically get you your website and content back. But instances like this one, when things go smoothly and work out perfectly, are very satisfying.
Check out Mascha’s website at maschahendriks.com