Thank you (again) Blake. I decided to try and get some blog-related maintenance done today, like backing up so I could upgrade my WordPress install. I downloaded the new version quite a while ago but never got upgraded.
I went to connect to my domain with my SFTP client and no luck. All I got was some stupid message about PASV mode needing to be off possibly and possible server firewalls. I tried several things, including turning off PASV mode, which had been on before when things had worked previously, to the best of my knowledge.
I finally sent an email to LISHost and within 2 hours (again) Blake had responded. It seems PASV mode does need to be off. I ensured it was still off in Fetch, my SFTP client, and in my System Preferences. Still no luck.
Blake also suggested I try Fugu, a different SFTP client for the Mac. I downloaded it and went to configure it. Taking a look at my setting in Fetch—so I could copy them over—I noticed they had gotten changed at some point. They were pointing at the LEEP server at school for some idiotic reason! Anyway, I dug out my initial setup email from Blake and had Fugu up and running in no time.
I finished getting the WordPress backup plugin configured and ran it. It hung at 55% the 1st time I tried. I gave it about 20 minutes but nothing changed. I hit Home and went back into WordPress and tried again. This time I had a file ready to download within seconds. Yay!
Now I think I should be OK to try and upgrade. If my blog completely disappears sometime soon, don’t panic (as I’ll be doing enough for both of us), it’s just me trying to upgrade. Honestly, I expect things to go well. Hopefully no one will even notice. I’ve done so little customization that even if I lose that no one will probably notice; except me. If I do lose it, then I hope I’ll do a better job of annotating my changes elsewhere this time.