jonimueller

That was going to be my next suggestion, after the OP gets his database back up and running. 🙂 Decent web hosts are a dime a dozen; there’s no reason to put up with inferior hosting.

Yes, it sounds to me like WP is looking for a database that doesn’t exist, and isn’t finding the real database.

You also say you are having issues with your web host. They generally run backups (well, at least MY web host does).

If you can access your web host’s console, do as c3mdigital advised, and see if you can get to PHPMyAdmin.

Once there, you may likely see TWO databases. One is going to be the shell install of WP, and the other will be the one you originally had, with the 141 posts/pages.

Go ahead and export that as an *.sql file to your hard drive for safekeeping.

Believe me, no plugin will ever wipe out a database. It’s just that WP isn’t looking where it should.

Are you saying you don’t have FTP access? Can you get to the File Manager via your Web Host’s control panel then?

It takes more than one minute of someone’s time to modify a theme, any theme, so … time is money. At least for some folks here.

I see that you got that theme from ElegantThemes. They’ve got a great forum dedicated specifically to their themes. I’d start there.
http://www.elegantthemes.com/forum/

Oh, and doing the virtual equivalent of jumping up and down and screaming and throwing a tantrum … because you don’t think anyone answered you quick enough (and I don’t even JUMP for my paying clients like that) … isn’t going to endear you to anyone here or get your questions answered. You’ll just end up on someone’s bozo list. Trust me.

try http://www.yourwebsite.com/wp-admin/

Did you install it in a subdirectory or on a subdomain? If so, the path may be different.

I’m using 2.9.2 as well.

Is that Teaching Blog one giant post, split manually into days, as I suspect?

What WP Page is serving as your “home” page in the Settings > Reading panel I mentioned above?

Cassandra, is the Teaching Blog the ONLY place where you will have posts? If so, it’s an easy fix.

Go to my web design site: http://www.pixelita.com

Everything there is a static WP Page EXCEPT the link that says “Blog.”
Click that. Now in my case, I have the index.php set to pull excerpts only. But the concept is the same. You’d set your WP site up the same way, except instead of “Blog” you’d call it “Teaching.” You *might* be able to get away with renaming “Teaching Blog” to “Blog,” and name the new page “Teaching Blog,” but because of the way WordPress handles deleted pages and posts, that might not work. So let’s just go ahead and rename “Teaching Blog” to just “Blog.” (May be later you can go ahead and rename “Teaching” back to “Teaching Blog,” but for now let’s just start fresh with a new blank page called “Teaching.”

I’m not sure if you are hard coding each days post? Are you? If so, you have some work to do after you set up the blog the way I’ve outlined below.

But first, let’s set up the blog to run concurrently with the rest of the site.

1. Create a blank page called “Teaching”
2. Go to Settings > Reading
3. See where it says “Front Page Displays…”?
4. For Front Page, choose “A Static Page” and the dropdown should give you a list of all your pages to select from.
5. For Posts, the “Teaching” page should appear in the dropdown.
6. You should either hard code that into your navigation bar, or if you have automatic pages displayed there (wp_pages), “Teaching” should appear there automatically.

Now if you’ve hard coded every single one of your “posts” on the “Teaching Blog” page in one huge post, you just need to cut and paste them as individual posts. You can fiddle with the date and back date them so that’s no problem.

Good luck. And PM me (check my profile) if you need offline help with this or ask for more explanations here and I’ll do my best.

That’s odd. Usually I’d advise you (all/both of you) to disable all plugins, and then see if you can regain access to the dashboard. If you CAN, that means some plugin is stinking up the pond. To find out which one, reactivate each plugin, one at a time, until you find the one that causes you to be kicked back off the dashboard. Then you can kill that one. But if you don’t have access to your backend, the only way to do this is to FTP into your plugins directory and rename that directory, fooling WP into thinking there are no plugins. (OR just FTP all the plugins down to your hard drive, delete them from the plugins folder and reupload each one, one at a time, until you find the culprit.

You could also try changing themes (again, FTP into your /themes directory and download all the theme folders, and just keep the /default or /twenty-ten folder, and delete the others. If the site returns when you have only the default theme installed, there’s some issue with the theme.

Failing ALL of that, I’d go ahead and backup my database, and reinstall WordPress.

You just need to delete the /wp-includes and /wp-admin folders, and all the *.php files EXCEPT config.php. Also, don’t delete your .htacess file or your robots.txt file if you have one. Then grab a fresh distro of WP and reupload everything. That should cure it. It is what I’d do if I were paid to troubleshoot this problem. 🙂