So you have your website up, probably a portfolio or online resume, and its runs normal for a long time. In addition, your host provider never let any technical difficulties they were having on their end affect what is going on with your stuff. If this did happen it would only be for a brief moment. Now one day things are different, and your site is down for 8 hours on three consecutive days and most of the other two. Nightmare much?!?!?!
My Scare
Well, that’s what happened to me last week. My hosting provider, who I am now planning a leave to the well recommended MediaTemple, was having server issues and it scared the life out of me. The only worry I had on my mind was, “O shit! If I loose the DB to my portfolio site I’m going to be ruined!!!”
In total I have about 250 blog posts, 200 images, custom posts, my work, SEO data and reports, unpublished articles, and some other stuff there that I’m too lazy right now to classify. So all that could be summed up into that if I lost my DB I’d be screwed.
So what could be the lesson learned here? Backing up is the most vital thing anyone with a website can do to keep safe. That’s the lesson I learned why my site eventually got back up and running. After this scare I immediately started backup up my DB and site folder routinely. Now I’m prepared for the worst!
What You Can Start Doing
Well by now your probably thinking what is it that I can do to make sure that I never have a scare like the guy writing this? Well if you’re CMS platform is WordPress, which is more than likely the case, there are lots of plugins to help you. So below I’ll list a few articles that show some good backup options for WP. Its also good to make note that every CMS platform has great backup plugin options. Its just that my site is WP based and I gathered these articles while looking for myself.
- WordPress Database and Files Backup Solutions
- 9 Top Free WP Backup Options
- 10 Free WP Plugins for Backup and Recovery
- VaultPress(just a good service)