Life as a blogger is coming to an end! What will we do?
Just kidding. Blogging will be around forever just like this global warming stuff has been. But your blog can come to an end and you need to be prepared!
Sometimes when you update WordPress, or a theme onto your site because the all knowing world wide web knows more than you do, you lose your data. Dang it! You’ve done all of this hard work, you’ve written beautiful words that have inspired readers to call you a hero among men, but somehow a terrible fate befalls your site and everything is gone.
You have backups right? One of the easiest ways to not get trapped in this scenario is to have files of all of your posts on your computer, or better yet, on an external hard drive. Or maybe you should backup your site stuff with an online database. No matter which way you go, it’s important to save your stuff on multiple avenues. It may seem like a hassle, but it will save your blog from hazardous “error” messages or you screaming “Ohhhhh, what a world, what a world. Who would have thought that some little [evil virus] like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness.”
The Internet can be tricky at times, so it’s better to be safe than sorry. A best scenario is that your site is in wonderful working order, but suddenly your computer crashes because those evil Trojan creating master minds have tapped into another important Microsoft document. This is just a “A plague a’ both your houses!”
All of your hard work has been dashed into a million pieces. This can even happen to Linux users, or at least I had a nasty dream that a Trojan got on my Linux running machine and I wanted to kill myself, so backup, backup, backup!
Some people swear by emailing important literary works of art, err or silly blogging topics, to themselves. This is also a good idea, but if you can just save your data on a thumb drive or something else that’s very convenient, then you won’t have to worry about finding a computer that still works to retrieve your awe inspiring words.
No matter which strategy you use, make sure it’s something that works for you and that your world changing prose are safe from technological idiosyncrasies.
Hey Patricia
Well, I can understand the pain of losing whole of the blog. It has happened to me two times. So taking backup really a must thing to do.
Divyun Raje Vaid
This is something I think we all have to get a lot better at. Not one when it comes to WordPress but backup in general.
As a new blogger (new blog: Simply Said) this post-backup suggestion is an important reminder. I do have an external hard drive, but the suggestion of perhaps downloading to a thumb drive, etc. is excellent. Thank you for the tip.
Joanne Maly, Lincoln Maly Marketing, Cincinnati, Ohio
I always keep a back up somewhere either on my host or hard drive. Thanks for the great information.
THis is something that I have learned somewhat painfully – and my attempts to recover made matters worse. Good advice.
We obsessive bloggers are loathe to consider our wonderful link to the real world, the internet, could ever fail us. As long as we pay our internet bill, and the light bill, and keep our computers in good running shape, we think we're ok. I backup my files all the time, but it never occurred to me to back up my blogs, especially the ones I have had for a long time and have many posts to lose. This is eye-opening for those who had not yet considered backing up their blog files. Personally, I have found my 8 GB thumb drive to be the best thing since sliced bread. I don't have to worry about losing everything if I get a virus or my hard drive crashes. I just have to worry about the thumb drive somehow being broken or otherwise rendered useless. I must stop thinking about that before I cry. Get a thumb drive. It's the most reliable way to go for storage, in my experience.
One thing you can do in wordpress using a plugin is set up an automatic database backup that e-mails the backup of the database to you. you can then save the e-mailed database to a hardrive and that way you would have the DB on your e-mail server as well as on a hardrive of your choice and it is nice and easy plus quick to do.
That's great to know Matt. Thanks for the info. We all need to know the little tricks to help our blog.