Earlier than expected, my website is up and running again – though still on an external server. This will not be permanent, as my own server is already purchased and ready to be put to good use. Alas! My time resources have so far not been enough to set up the software and especially the security measures that are required these days. As I will be away for research from the end of March until the middle of April, it seemed feasible to fire up this version, as right now one or two people have taken a look at the site and wondered why it was down.

To remind you: In January my hosting provider unexpectedly shut down my website because for some reason it suddenly needed an enormous amount of CPU power. Something must have gone wrong with one of the plugins, I suppose. Yet, I didn’t really get the chance to look into it as the provider demanded that I upgrade my plan to a more expensive one to get access to my page and data.

That seemed like blackmail to me. I refused and instead linked the URL with this hastily written static page which contained at least some of the information that was on the old website (and some appropriately black margins for the state of mourning I was in). Then I went to work to organise my own server hardware and read through some manuals on how to set up the software. Yet, as mentioned, other matters (some academic, some quotidian, some extraordinary) demanded my attention and I realised that my goal to have the website up and running on my own server by late March became increasingly unrealistic.

Therefore I decided to put this one out, still externally hosted (take a look at the URL while browsing around and you’ll notice. Oh, and sorry for the occasional ads; I had to find an interim solution quickly) but otherwise salvaged exactly as it was from the backups of my old internet presence.

These monthly backups came in really handy and provided almost everything that had been there on the page before. Almost everything, except for the last few updates I had scribbled in January, which consisted of one new post and some amendments to my publications list. It seems that, although my website is far from dynamic, bi-weekly updates would have been better (will keep that in mind for my own server).

That means that the last blog post, about my participation at a conference in Florence shortly before Christmas and some new articles that were published subsequently, all went down the drain. And say what you want about the internet: It really does forget things. No mirrored image of my website anywhere, no copy from the Wayback Machine at archive.org (how could they so far overlook my absurdly important and entertaining site?).

In the next few days, I’ll write another post to mimic the lost one, update my publications list, and then – if I find the time – experiment with transferring the existing data to my own server. Maybe I succeed in bringing everything together in the next week but if time constraints shackle me again, expect an announcement of server independence in early May!