I am pretty stubborn about some things.
A few weeks ago, I rebuilt by freelance website. I hadn’t really touched it since I first put it up two years ago. So I overhauled the entire site, which included adding some new plugins and widgets. Particularly, I wanted to update the security of my site by creating a secure admin login page.
I researched different ways to do this. I read about my plugin options. I made my decision, set everything up, chose a really clever page slug that I would totally remember.
Then I left my fresh site to collect dust for a few weeks.
Last weekend, I went to log in to my freelance site. But I couldn’t remember my new, clever, memorable login page address.
I tried a few different page addresses. No luck. I tried typing random letters into my browser’s address bar, hoping that autocomplete would help me out.
It didn’t.
I opened up my browser history and went back to the weekend I did my site’s overhaul. I figured the login page must be listed there somewhere. I’d spent hours rebuilding my site. Setting up the new security protocols. Testing it. It had to be there somewhere.
It wasn’t.
Frustrated, I logged into my web hosting admin panel. I figured I would surely be able to easily find the information there. I poked around in my domain management portals. At the very least, maybe I could reset it if all else failed.
I couldn’t.
I was strongly starting to consider deleting the whole website. Throwing my laptop into the fire. And running into the forest, never to be seen again.
I started going through my site’s database, file by file. It had to be there somewhere.
If it was, it was hiding from me.
What an a-hole.
It was now quickly approaching 2am. My partner suggested that we go to bed and give it ago in the morning after I’d had a chance to sleep on it.
But that’s not how I work.
Instead of doing the practical thing, I queued for my web host’s tech support live chat. At 2am on a Sunday morning. And waited. And waited.
While I waited, I poked around some more in my site’s database. I opened every file. I read through so many pages that my eyes were burning. I was going to figure out what my admin page login was if it took all. Damn. Night.
Finally, my chat window pinged. I was next in line for the tech support chat.
At the same time, buried deep in the files of my website, I found what I was looking for. The URL to the secure admin login page.
It may have taken over 4 hours, a lot of cursing and the worrisome feeling that maybe I’d been gaslighting myself, but I figured it out.
This is my long-winded way of saying that the same stubbornness that kept me up all night trying to figure out my freelance website is the same stubbornness that keeps bringing me back to this blog.
I’m going to keep poking around until I figure it all out.
So yes. Still here. Hi, hello. Thanks for sticking it out with me.