Last Friday night I was having fun developing my first ever WordPress plugin (a thumbnail archive page if you must ask), that I happily stayed awake well past midnight to work on it. Now of course this was at the end of a week long slog at work so I was pretty tired as you can well imagine (yes, yes, I’m not as young as what I used to be!), but the excitement over what I was busy getting up to was more than enough to keep me awake, fingers glued to the keyboard as I furiously typed away at my PHP code.
But as it is with all good things, I had to eventually call it a night, as my mind and eyes slowly succumbed to the alluring call of bed, and I finished up with what I was busy and logged out of the FTP manager. Now properly tired, I thought hang on a minute, it is past midnight so my Google Analytics stats would have updated, meaning we can have a quick peek at Friday’s numbers, right?
So I duly logged into Google Analytics, checked the numbers, and then did something silly.
Because at a stage I also ran Touchwork’s Txt and Tell project’s analytics under my private account, I have two main Analytics accounts under my main Dashboard view. Seeing as I am no longer associated with the Txt and Tell project, I decided to delete that account, and so happily clicked away through the dialogs (of course saying yes to the all important “I’m sure because this is PERMANENT” one), before stepping back and smiling at my now cleaner Analytics dashboard view.
Except the smile didn’t last more than half a second.
In my blurry, hazy, sleepy state, I had accidentally deleted my personal Google Analytics account instead of the Txt and Tell one, wiping out all my Analytics accounts across ALL of my websites in one fell swoop!
Damn it.
(So Saturday morning I spend a hour recreating Analytics accounts and installing them across my various sites. Wifey was not impressed with my dawdling in the office on a day with so much to do I might add!)
And that, ladies and gentleman, is why you shouldn’t be messing around on the Internet after midnight and more importantly, when your mind has already shut down for the night! :)