When to back-up your wordpress blog

I make todays post filled with humility and my recent misfortune should act as a lesson for all would be webmasters everywhere.

There are some occassions when you should back -- up your WP blog; -

1. Before any upgrades are made to your WP version.
2. Before your hosting company (or you) do any maintenance on your server.
3. Monthly or more often depending on how frequently you make a post or update to your website.

I say this because I have just spent weeks sorting out my wordpress blog after what can only be described as a complete disaster.

You see just after my last post in January I decided to upgrade my version of WP and figured I had enough knowledge to make the changes in a relatively short period of time, with little chances of any mistakes……..how little I knew. Afterall I had done this upgrade often enough to understand the process and the pitfalls.

Which just goes to show that assumption really is the mother of all screw-ups.

Assumption is a deadly human trait that we all suffer from occassionally. I have learned a valuable lesson which I am hoping I remember so i don’t do so again. I am also offering this as a lesson to those who follow on behind me in building a WP blog or content management system based upon the WP theme.

So, confident in my assumption I went ahead and started the process of the upgrade. Everything was going according to plan when Somewhere in the midst of this upgrade I was asked if I would like to download my databases from within WP and advised to do so by the upgrade script. In previous upgrades I had always downloaded these and they sat happily gathering cyber dust on my hard drive never to be required again. Until this fateful occassion.

So just like most people in the throws of a cataclysmic event, I happily clicked to ignore this step and happily carried on regardless. What happened then is a mystery or a joke, i have yet to decide either way. The exact sequence of events is difficult to fathom but in essence my firefox browser crashed, which I find happens a lot in Vista. This naturally ditched my connection to my server and I was unable to get my connection working for almost 24 hours. Being winter here in BC just like the rest of the North American continent, our Electrical supply and telecommunications system is subject to interruptions based upon the prevailing weather, and so it proved to be. In some distant point a tree had severed a cable and that was that. my internet was gone.

Still I figured I would be O.K and the server would just hang and wait until i re-connected. Apparently it had other ideas and it closed the connection mid command and …………………………………..erased my databases. I, my hosting company and others I have spoken too about the chances of this event all agree, it was an act right out of the retribution of god……………..and i was essentially, well you know-screwed!!

I was blissfully unaware of the consequences of this minor connection problem and so I remained oblivious to the unfolding events and sat dumb and happy watching the snow fall outside sipping a rum and coke whilst pondering the woes of our world.

24 hours or so later I logged on to my website and sat dumfounded. I was essentially rudderless and unable to get into my blog admin or to log on to the main site. Fortunately I had 3 back-ups to draw on from previous events but the latest one was almost 3 months old so it was somewhat incomplete. I also had copies of all the original posts but not the subsequent ammendments or updates I had made. Plugins were also a problem because I had some I paid for to do specific tasks, which had to be restored individually using an FTP program, once I managed to remember what I had installed etc

So over the course of the last 6 weeks or so I have managed to restore my WP databases and content to almost a complete rebuild of the situation pre-winter. I am sure somewhere there are others who have made similar errors of judgement and paid this same price.

It is a horrible position to be in knowing that you have smoked your own website because you were stupid, but thats the sum of this experience.

I trust my drama will serve to remind all who read this of the perils of assumption. I am hoping that I also remember and avoid such strife as days pass and the memory fades.

Until the next pearl of wisdom, have a great day, leave a comment or tweet this as you see fit.

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