When Things Do Go Wrong
Monika Mundell on April 10th, 2008This post was written by Monika Mundell
It’s funny, here I am raving about how good my host is and then things suddenly go wrong. A few days ago I instructed my hosting provider to upgrade my server to a reseller account. I wanted a more stable environment and more bandwidth, as I’m heavily into niche marketing right now.
All was fine until now. Suddenly my last two posts are gone and so are the latest comments on my blog. As if they never even been there.
The purpose of this post is to show you how important it is to make regular blog backups. To do this I use the WordPress Database Backup Plugin. It works a treat and does the job every time.
If memory serves me right, it also works on the latest WordPress 2.5 version too. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this mentioned on another blog and the WordPress Codex page doesn’t seem to list this at present as being approved, but you can always test this anyway.
Lucky for me (or so I hope) I did make a backup today, but it might have been before I published my latest post which took me some 70 minutes to write. Uuh this hurts bad.
It really sucks when this happens and therefore we need to protect ourselves from events like these by updating regularly.
As you can see below, you can choose which tables you want to backup by ticking the respective box to the left of it.
You can also choose to backup to the server, to download to your computer or send the backup file to your email inbox.
One feature I really like is the scheduled backup. You can choose between:
- Never (duh)
- Once Hourly
- Once Daily
- Once Weekly
And choose the tables to include beforehand as seen in the next screen shot.
If you don’t backup regularly right now, I suggest you do from now on as this can save you a lot of headaches. Regardless of whether you blog often or not, backing up your data is so important.
I don’t know yet on whether the guys of my host can fix this, but I sure hope so otherwise I am not a very happy camper.
Only time will tell I guess. Do me a favor and go backup right now since you won’t remember tomorrow and then it might be too late already. The Plugin will walk you through this step by step so even beginners can follow along without a glitch.
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I’m with ya buddy!
I had the same problem with hostgator myself, I’ve always been happy with the service they’ve given in the past but the same happened to me. I put another blog in a subdomain using fantastico and my primary weightloss blog disappeared with out trace. I hadn’t got it backed up so I had to get it reinstalled from their back ups but like you the last posts have disappeared.
Its funny but I’ve just started to use this plugin as well, just set it and forget it.
If only I had this plugin a few days earlier.
@ Barry: yes, lucky for me I had a local version of the posts in my Windows Live Writer and my feed reader. At least I can re-publish them if need be in case the support team can’t get it back up.
I’m a techno idiot and when it comes to these things I’m about as helpless as a baby.
Monika Mundell’s last blog post..Setting Up A BlogSite - Freelance Writing Guide
Hey Barry,
The post is by a new Editor: Monika Mundell and she shares her experience in it. It is a great post but I always say - never rely on automation 100% and always have your own backups before working on your sites
Cheers,
Alex
@ Alex: thanks, that is so true. We never can’t be sure that things will always go as they should, so double control always helps I guess.
Monika Mundell’s last blog post..Setting Up A BlogSite - Freelance Writing Guide
Help quick, what is 6+9? Ok…well if only the WP upgrades were that easy. I break out in a cold sweat everytime they have one and then Alex usually has to fix all my mistakes. The problem is that I keep adding more blogs, and now I think I have 4!! Seriously I am so far behind now in upgrading becaue I hate to always bug Alex.
I need to solution to Upgrade anxiety. Now there is the backup anxiety!!! A year ago I had blogs pulling in $$ and I even hosted other’s blogs and was making some extra $$. Then my domain host started ripping off my domain names by not letting me renew them (that Fly domain registration service was really inexpensive but proved oh so costly). Right after that my web hosting provider said he got hacked and I lost all my sites and blogs…wow.
Lessons learned the hard way. Keep copies of your blogs and websites on your own hard drives or disks somewhere. I never recovered from what happened a year ago. I just moved on and am no where near where I was then. However I am smarter!
Use reputable Hosts!!
Now, Alex, about those upgrades…
@ Rocque” wow, you certainly got slammed alright. I feel for you, that must have hurt some and more. You are certainly lucky to have a guy like Alex helping you along with the upgrade.
I do strongly recommend that Plugin though since it works a treat. Just make sure to backup before you intend to upgrade, just in case.
As for your calculation….mmmhh I had to rip out my calculator to give me that answer.
Monika Mundell’s last blog post..Setting Up A BlogSite - Freelance Writing Guide
Rocque,
No worries - I will not leave you alone. In fact that is what I’ve been doing lately - working on upgraded version. Also once all the issues resolved - you will get video tutorial and all appropriate files to make it as painless as I can manage to do.
Problem is this upgrade is huge and Backup will be absolutely critical!
Its coming and I’ll post announcement via email, on members forums and perhaps even on this blog. I want to be sure that when all is set and ready and once all issues are hammered out - my customers will benefit from my extended hours of work
Alex
I am waiting to upgrade until you give the go ahead Alex! I won’t do it before that. Since my last two upgrades have been challenging I can easily wait.
Take your time because I know it is worth the wait.
Well with all the technorati scare of losing your indexed blogs I decided to start the upgrade.
Of course it has gone wrong. I was not expecting it to go wrong. I have heard it is easy. Well maybe if you do not use widgets and have a sidebar with all sorts of banners and stuff.
Plus there is a message that I have no stylesheet, and there is definitely a stylesheet where I see one. Hmmmm…
Also there is an error on line 34 of my index.php
My template is not working at all, it looks like I have to reinstall every single widget (what happened to the old widgets?)…
I have a few people waiting for me to help them with this…lol..oops…
I think I will disappear for a while. Just when you feel confident about WP they change your life.
Rocque,
Please recover from backup. I’m sorry with delay. I have started creating the upgrade tutorial on Friday but due to some family emergency was unable to finish it. I promise I’ll release it this week!
Alex
@ Rocque: oh my, looks like the latest WordPress version really does create some issues for a few people. I think you suffer the classic case of non compatibility between WordPress, themes and plugins.
Hopefully with Alex’s help you can sort this out ASAP.
Monika Mundell’s last blog post..Freelance Writing Blog Crawl - Round Three