A couple of weeks ago, my website disappeared for no apparent reason. As far as I knew, I hadn’t done anything to cause the disappearance. There was no evidence the website had been hacked. I hadn’t tampered with any of the settings. Nonpayment of the website’s maintenance fee wasn’t the problem either, since that is paid automatically from my bank account. Yet when I tried to log in, I got this discouraging message:

Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request. Please contact the server administrator, and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

Obviously, this wasn’t a problem I was going to solve on my own. So, following the message’s advice, I contacted WordPress and told them what happened. They politely reminded me that they weren’t the administrators of my website; that responsibility belonged to Fatcow.com. WordPress was kind enough to give me a link to Fatcow’s website, which included an option for having an online chat with a tech representative. (I always prefer that channel rather than an e-mail or a phone call.)

So I started a chat with a Fatcow tech who greeted me cheerfully and then asked me to answer the security question: What is your favorite movie?

Five years had passed since I opened the Fatcow account, so I didn’t remember what answer I’d given to that question. But there really could only be two possible movies.

“Either Chariots of Fire or The Wizard of Oz.”

“Which one is it?”

Apparently, he needed one specific answer for the chat to continue. Well, I had a 50-50 chance, so I gave it a shot.

“Chariots of Fire.”

“Sorry that is not the answer we needed.”

Uh-oh. Did this mean I couldn’t find out what happened to the missing website? Fortunately, the tech sent me to a place where I could re-set my security question and answer, which I did. (Chariots Fire replaced The Wizard of Oz.) Then the investigative process began anew with a new representative. Once we finished with the preliminaries, the representative asked me whether I had done anything with my php.ini file. I told him “no,” and then admitted I didn’t even know what a php.ini file was. He didn’t offer an explanation, but said he would check that file right now. A few minutes later, he returned and announced the problem had indeed been with the php.ini file. He had fixed it and I should now be able to access my website. I was skeptical but decided to try. I typed in www.claywrites.info and the website appeared with all sections — Home, About Me, Books, Blog — accessible. Pleased but puzzled, I returned to the rep with questions.

“Did I do something to cause this problem?”

He couldn’t say for sure.

“What can I do to prevent this problem from happening again?”

He didn’t really answer the question. Instead, he said it “may not happen again” since “he had renamed the file.”

He then tried to link me up with some Fatcow people who could show me how to give my website a higher profile, which would bring more visits. I postponed that for a later date.

My website is up and running now, and maybe it won’t vanish again. Or maybe the php.ini file will be corrupted sometime in the future, and claywrites.info will vanish into cyberspace once more. Or maybe a totally new problem will bring it down. Knowing as little as I do about computers and the Internet, my website seems as vulnerable as a lamb in a wolves’ den.