Most of the online marketing training that I have been exposed to makes a point of mentioning the importance of backups at least once. The main backup that is mentioned is the database backup, and yes, this is important. With the availability of the WordPress Database plugin, which is free to use, and a free Gmail account, you have the ability to send a copy of your database to yourself on a daily basis. Once setup, this is virtually a hands free and cost free process, so there is no excuse for not having your database for your WordPress blog backed up.

Another needed backup that is frequently mentioned is that of backing up the files on your actual website. More than one online business has faced irretrievable loss when a hosting provider has gone out of business or suffered a major server side glitch and all files have been lost. Does this take time? Of course it does. But it is nothing compared to the time you would spend trying to recreate your website or blog from thin air. So, if you are not already familiar with using your ftp, it is time to learn how to work with it and take a full copy of the files that make up your website.

So now we have covered the database and files, what about the settings? If you manage your website yourself as many of us do, you have invested a significant amount of time in how your site has been setup. Would you be able to easily recreate those settings? Or would you have to once again go through the process of investigating what each means before implementing? Do you know what is all listed under links? Have you made reciprocal link deals with any other sites? This information will not necessarily be available on a restore. It should, but what if it is not? Do you have another means of recovering this information?

As I mentioned above, the release of WordPress 3.0 prompted an overhaul for this blog. This happened for two reasons:

1) The theme I was currently using did not migrate well. And…

2) I had too many blogs with too many different themes, which effectively doubled the work load.

So, I decided to use the Magazine Basic theme as the default for all of my blogs.

To do this effectively, I set up a testing site, (with search engines blocked), under my default blog and installed WordPress 3. I also took this opportunity to setup clean databases and name them in a manner that reflected which blog they referred to. So, importing the database was not an option here. Fortunately, there is a plugin called WordPress Importer that allows you to export all of your posts and pages and re-import them to a new installation. I had to do some tweaking with the Categories and Tags, but overall, this was a definite plus as my intention was to wipe out the original blog once the test one was setup to my satisfaction.

It was at this point that I realized just how much was missing. All of the links had to be manually redone, as well as the basic settings, user accounts, specialty settings, plugin setups, analytics settings, menus, and of course any redirection links that had existed in the original blog.

Now most of you will be able to re-establish your website without having to do all of this , simply because you do have a valid database backup on hand and a copy of your website files. If you are not techy enough to restore it yourself it should be relatively easy to find someone to help you with it. However, if for any reason your database backups are unusable, having a listing of your website settings and an export of your posts and pages will help you to get back up and running.

A further unseen benefit occurred for me just a few days ago. Having setup the testing site for one of my blogs, I had thought to remove it at a later date when I was comfortable with the new setup. Of course, there never did seem to be the time to do this, and in this case, that was a very good thing.

You see, I added a new plugin to this other blog and upon activation, my customized home page disappeared. After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I realized I still had my test site running and was able to use it as a reference while troubleshooting the effects of this new plugin, which did not disappear when the plugin was deactivated.

After a bit of time and a great deal of head scratching, I found that a new redirection had been implemented when the plugin was activated and so everytime I tried to go to the home page, it redirected me to the page associated with the plugin. Once this redirection was removed, I confirmed that my customized home page was the one set in the Settings areas and all was back where it needed to be.

This is just one small example of how having a testing environment available saved the day. And I admit, had I used the testing environment to test the addition of this plugin instead of my main blog, a lot of grief could have been avoided. I have learned my lesson with the above experiences and I hope that what I have learned will benefit others in the future.

To Your Success,

SherryD
http://www.wbobr.com

The use of plugins such as the WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin and the WordPress Database Backup plugin makes the upgrade of WordPress a fairly quick and easy process. It is the ease of this process, which sometimes enables WordPress users to relax and forget that no matter how great the tools are that they are using, disaster can happen when least expected. Many online marketers have found over time that a backup of their website files is critical to the continuation of their business. While I personally have not had an upgrade go bad or had a web hosting service suffer a catastrophic event, there are enough stories out there where others have had these experiences.

If you have a business, and you depend on that business for income, it is worth protecting and taking the time to setup a disaster recovery plan for it. What would you do if the hosting service you work with suffered a catastrophic event and your website files were lost? Would you be able to recover your website? What about running an upgrade, in this case a WordPress upgrade and your site fails to come back up once it is done? Would you be able to reconstruct your site?

Occasionally an upgrade problem could be related to a plugin that did not care for the upgrade, but there have been situations where an entire site has been taken down. Upgrades are generally released for a reason. In the case of the 2.8.6 release, a vulnerability that could be exploited by registered users is fixed. Therefore, it is a good idea to upgrade in a timely manner when upgrades are released. It also pays to protect the site in advance before doing the upgrade.

Backing up a website is a relatively simple process. Create a folder on your hard drive and use your FTP program to download your website files. Don’t forget to include the date of the backup in the folder name. Once they are downloaded, they can be burnt to disk or copied to another location.

Another good plan is to take regular backups of your database files. If you are using the WordPress Database Backup plugin, there is an option under Dashboard – Tools – Backup to schedule regular backups of your database and email the results to your email account. If you have a GMail account with its ability to store unlimited files, simply email the backups there and you will always have a backup to fall back on.

Upgrades are not the only time you should be backing up your website. As part of your disaster recovery plan, schedule regular backups of your website files, particularly if you will be making significant changes to the site.

Update December 02, 2009:
Before you say this could never happen to you, realize it does happen, even to well established sites. Tonight I visited backflip.com. Their site has been down since October 13th. Here is what is posted currently on their site.

[ October 13, 2009 - 7:00pm PDT ]

A power outage at our hosting facility took out all of our servers for several hours starting around 7:00am PDT. Once the power came back on we began to bring the servers up remotely. Unfortunately, the database server is refusing to start up. Surely it’s nothing terminal but will require human intervention and there is no one available to head over to the colo facility at the moment. Please check our twitter microblog on the left for the latest updates.

# thank you for your continued patience – believe it or not recovery efforts are still continuing. we will have more info later this week. 1 day ago
# effort to recover the database continues 15 days ago
# update : restore from backups failed. remaining chance at recovery is to fix the existing database. work continues. 23 days ago

I haven’t had a lot of time to post lately because the company, where I work as a server tech, is in the process of moving to a new facility. This has required months of preparation to simply ensure that all systems could be safely moved and that a plan was in place to recover in case of an accident or the system failing to start up in the new location. Backups have played a key role in this project, as they do in the company’s overall disaster recovery plan.

As you can see from the experience of Backflip, disaster can strike at anytime, to anyone. I wish them every success in their recovery process.

To Your Success,

SherryD
http://www.wbobr.com