Alternative to NameCheap and WordPress

[Thomas Judson]

I am unable to update the webpage for AATA and the ODE Project.  Does anyone have an alternative to Namecheap and/or WordPress?  The webpage to judsonbooks.org is broken, and I am unable to edit files on the webpage.  I spent 3 hours today with NameCheap support.  They were unable to provide a fix.  Everything works correctly until I try to edit a file.  Then I get the “white page of death.”

AAARRRGGGHHH!!!

Tom

[Oscar Levin]

I strongly recommend using github pages and just using namecheap for your domain names.  This requires some extra setup to get the "landing" page working the way you want, but it seems like the "ease" of using wordpress is lost on this project anyway if you have this much trouble.

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[Mitch Keller]

I’ve been using WordPress for close to 20 years now, first via BlueHost and now with Hosting.com (formerly A2Hosting). These hosting providers, like NameCheap, all use cPanel to deploy their managed hosting solutions. We also run the entirety of wisc.edu on WordPress.

It seems like NameCheap’s tech support is the problem here. WordPress should just work, and someone at NameCheap tech support should be able to figure out what’s wrong. It may be that they need to reinstall WordPress for you, but they should be able to do it in a way that doesn’t overwrite any of your data. The /wp-admin login page doesn’t look right on judsonbooks.org, which makes me think the install is broken and needs to be redone.

You might try following https://www.hostinger.com/tutorials/backup-wordpress#How_to_back_up_a_WordPress_site_using_a_plugin to make a backup and then following https://www.hostinger.com/tutorials/how-to-reinstall-wordpress#Reinstalling_WordPress_via_the_admin_dashboard to reinstall WordPress. These tutorials come from a different hosting provider, but the WordPress screenshots included look very standard.

A WordPress site is designed to be easy to log into and edit or create additional pages as necessary. Especially when you only edit things once or twice a year, this generally works well. I’m not trying to minimize Tom’s issues here. It sounds very frustrating, especially since NameCheap seems to not be doing much to help matters. I’m mainly making these comments so that others who are trying to decide what to do don’t immediately write off using the product that seamlessly runs a huge percentage of the internet because of issues one user is encountering.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pretext-support/CAOU9BaXWur%3DCY6NyL%3D-S%3D9p5g%3DjD8ci-a3Cz%2Bf0Sq8jeQuoS3Q%40mail.gmail.com.

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Mitch Keller
mi...@rellek.net

http://www.rellek.net/

[Thomas Judson]

I agree that the most likely problem is NameCheap.  All that I want to do is edit some text in an HTML file.  You think that this would be easy.  I can’t even find the @#$@ HTML files.  In any case, I deleted the WP installation in NameCheap (after making copies of the files).  I installed a new copy of WP and a simple file, which I cannot edit without gettign the white screen of death.  I will bring it up at the next PreTeXt dropin.

Tom

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pretext-support/BA2F71BA-FF5E-4521-A069-6ECB11A1F14D%40rellek.net.

[David W. Farmer]

Tom: Once you chose WordPress you more-or-less gave up the option of
"just edit HTML files". Or more precisely: you are forced to do it
through their interface, and you can't control everything.

> To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pretext-support/80B9E52E-5315-4DF8-8339-6784D0970F4D%40gmail.com.
>
>

[Mitch Keller]

All your WordPress content lives in a database and not in individual HTML files. If you did not do a WordPress backup using the instructions I linked to before, saving the files did not save your content. You will likely be able to recover it using the Wayback Machine, however. (I know because I accidentally deleted my WordPress database this summer and had to recover appliedcombinatorics.org’s content from the Wayback Machine.)

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pretext-support/80B9E52E-5315-4DF8-8339-6784D0970F4D%40gmail.com.

[Thomas Judson]

Yup! I figured that out. I was just expressing my frustration.

> To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pretext-support/36b8e7c-42c-707a-9e37-7127c6c2f51%40aimath.org.

[Thomas Judson]

I saved the files so I could rebuild the website from scratch if need be.  I still cannot edit in WordPress.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pretext-support/C53DDA20-8864-44F3-B774-757D89B47AD9%40rellek.net.

[Thomas Judson]

I can rebuild the site pretty quickly from the saved files provided I can figure out how to edit a file in WordPress.  Why is this so damned hard?

Tom

On 19 Aug 2025, at 17:49, Mitch Keller <mi...@rellek.net> wrote:

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pretext-support/C53DDA20-8864-44F3-B774-757D89B47AD9%40rellek.net.