Apr
3
Last week I lost my blog; in fact, I lost two. Seems a bit careless, doesn’t it? But it wasn’t my fault. Here’s what happened. On Friday I posted to Get Paid To Write Online and everything was fine. On Saturday, my host had an unexpected maintenance timeout; on Sunday my sites were suspended. Not good news at all, especially since the sites in question were my main blog and my professional site, where I send all my prospective clients to look at my stuff. I knew I had paid my hosting fees, so what was the problem?
After a bit of digging around and a live chat with tech support, I found the problem. Somehow I’d ended up in the middle of a battle between my hosting reseller and the hosting company - and I was losing. The hosting company’s position was: ‘Tough; sort it out with the reseller.’ The reseller’s position was: ‘The hosting company has made a mistake but they are being stubborn.’ Either way, I was blogless.
Lesson 1: Backup Regularly
So, what to do? Luckily, I had been about to transfer my hosting anyway. I’d been going for a phased transfer of my three blogs, but it was clear that I needed to speed up the timetable, so I set that in motion, and learned my first lesson. Weekly blog backups are not enough. If you are using WP-backup, backup daily and have the backups emailed to you. If they are on the FTP server when services are withdrawn they are no good to you.
Lesson 2: Google’s Cache Is Your Friend
My last backup of Get Paid To Write Online was almost a week old. It meant that two posts were missing along with a whole heap of comments. One of my Twitter friends suggested I search Google’s cache - lesson two. Job done - I managed to retrieve the two posts. Incidentally, if you use Windows Live Writer, you also have a local copy of your post with the date and time stored. That makes it easy to upload it again.
Lesson 3: Comment Moderation And Email Backups
Lesson 3 was about comment moderation and email backups. Since I use Google Apps on two domains, I have one forwarded to the other. The first serves as a backup. Since I moderate all comments on my blog, I can actually restore them from those comment moderation emails.
Lesson 4: Save Local Copies Of Backups
The toughest lesson was lesson four. You’ve probably noticed that I haven’t mentioned the other blog that disappeared into a black hole. That’s because I didn’t have a backup. I know better, it’s true. And I am sure that somewhere on my hard drive is an old backup of the site. However, I never automated a backup because I didn’t post regularly. If I had backed up, I wouldn’t be writing this. Lesson four is: always backup even if it seems like a waste of time.
Lesson 5: Buy Hosting And Domain Names From Different People
There’s one final lesson, and at least it was one thing I did right. Always buy your blog’s domain name separately from your hosting. That means that if your host goes AWOL, you can start up again with another host in only a few hours. My situation was slightly more complex because of email, so I bought a new domain name, logged into GoDaddy and redirected my old site to the new one. I used Google’s cache to recover my pages and wrote a post.
I had remembered to keep my tweaked blog theme files on my hard drive, instead of updating them online, so I quickly uploaded the theme and was good to go. Needless to say, I will be backing up this blog daily.
So, that’s my sad story with a happy ending. Has anything like this ever happened to you? How did you handle it?
I always download a backup about once a week. I write maybe two posts a week so I wouldn’t be losing to much work. My friend Alex Dombroff backs up after every single post, and he posts 5 times a day! Imagine trying to store all of that.
Wow, that is a LOT of backups. I think a daily backup will be enough for me.
Blimey, that is bordering on compulsion. Does he overwrite previous back-ups or keep fresh ones each time.
I have to admit that I am lousy on site back-ups. Is there any particular app that people would recommend to use for that?
I use WP-Backup for my blog backups, and MozyBackup for general files. Apart from that I keep an external hard drive and just copy the files I’ve worked on each day.
For me, the best prevention is to use the biggest service providers I can find. Presently I’m using GoDaddy and feel secure knowing that they’re huge enough to own and run everything themselves.
I really should get around to backing up though…
GoDaddy is great for domain registration. I now have hosting spread out between Bluehost and MediaTemple.
I use WPBackup to backup my database. The database is mailed to outlook and to a Gmail adress. There’s a really small chance that your website and your computer crash simultaneously and I always have some backups online
Maybe it seems like a waste of time but it doesn’t cost me extra time, and I really don’t want to lose data. My theme files are changed on my computer before I upoad them to my site. I burn old backup directories to CD’s. I guess I’m quite on the safe side 
That’s pretty much what I do, Fabian. The only problem in this case was using weekly backups. The hosting went under the day before the next scheduled one.
hmm… I never back up my wordpress blog, may be I should do it now
Btw, can anyone show me the link to WPBackup?
I use this one:
http://www.ilfilosofo.com/blog/wp-db-backup/
As someone who is thinking about starting a blog soon, I appreciate those tips. Thanks!
As a writer who also happens to work for a domain name / hosting company, I would add that there is no problem having your domain name and hosting with the same provider as long as they are an established, large company. Netregistry, (my bosses) are the largest domain name provider in Australia - they’re not going to disappear and take your hosted files with them overnight. At least that way you have the convenience of having everything controlled in the one place.
(Okay, that’s me in the bosses good books for another week…)
It is usually the budget, cheapo hosting companies that turn out to be a guy and his mate with a garage full of servers that cause problems. A friend of mine had trouble with his website once, phoned for support and was told ‘the guy is on holiday for two weeks. He’ll fix it when he gets back”.
Go with established brands and you should have fewer problems.
Having said that, I need to organise a regular backup schedule for my blog.
Good point, Kimota. You’ve got to do your research before buying hosting. Making sure the company is well established is an excellent first step.
I’ve had similar experience with Blogger. Lesson learned - never, ever rely on free services when you rely to make money from them!
I use 1and1 for hosting, and I think they’re pretty huge. I’ve never even thought of backing up my site, I guess I should learn though.
True, true. All good tips.
And now, when I rebuild my blog - it tanked last Monday - I will start to keep a copy on my laptop too, just in case.
Lesson learned - the hard way.
That’s often the way it goes, Roland. I’ve learned plenty of things the hard way myself.
Great information! I think everyone forgets that these kind of situations can arise from anywhere at anytime.
This is a good alert to anyone that it can happen to you and it’s not even your fault.
Thanks for the info and advice.
Pugsley
@ Shape: You’re right. I know several people who have lost their Blogger blogs because of a mistake.
@ Ria: 1 and 1 have been around for a while, but backing up is always useful
@ Pugsley: I admit to being blindsided by this. I take better than average precautions on most of my blogs, but I have learned some great lessons about how to improve.
Too late was the cry for one of my online buddies. Well, so he thinks anyway.
He had a blog with Wordpress, fairly new and not too much content but enough to want to keep. Tried to log in today and the account is suspended - no idea why but my understanding is that he will struggle to save the content (please correct me if that is not the case).
And no, he didn’t back-up
So, no pages cached yet? If he uses social bookmarking sites like Furl, then some of them save a copy of what’s been bookmarked. That might help save some posts.
@PS3
I have had this experience before
better advise your friend not to use free wordpress. After all, $10 yearly(domain) + $5 monthly(hosting) isn’t much expensive right 
This was a great post, and very helpful, as I had not thought about buying a separate domain, and hosting.
Thanks!
Buying my own domain was one of the best decisions I ever made, Phyllis.