Prevent Blogging Disaster, Back It Up

Build A Better Blog Day 18

Today's tip is probably one of the most important I'll write about. You may spend hundreds of hours creating the perfect blog site, only to wake up one morning to find it all gone. I've seen it happen, and its happened to me. The feeling is gut wrenching. But it is avoidable with a little work ahead of time.

Here is how I create a disaster recovery system.

1. I have every post sent to me via email so I have all the content. If for some reason I lose my database at least I have all the blog posts and can re enter them.
2. I have an automated database backup scheduled with my hosting provider. Once the database is backed up its emailed to me and stored on a different FTP server. This took a little work but can be accomplished.
3. At least once a week I back up all the blog files. This includes themes, plug-ins and images. I make a lot of code tweaks so I want to make sure I have everything backed up.
4. Once a week I zip up all the blog files and database archives and store it on my Amazon S3 space. This is a pay service but its so cheap. The advantage here is my files are off site and be recovered from just about anywhere. There are several free services like Mozy and Xdrive you can use too.

A few weeks ago a site I was maintaining was some how reverted to files created months earlier. I'm not sure if the web hosting company restored a backup on top of all my files, but the result was months worth of work was lost. And the ironic thing was I didn't have a back up. I know, I was slapping myself in the face. No one else had too. I thought every thing was lost, then I remembered a web site called archive.org which lets you search a domain for snapshots of the site in the past. This saved me. Archive.org had one day of files with all my modifications and content so I was able to get a good majority of what I needed.

If you use a hosted service like Blogger or Wordpress.com or LiveJournal, these services probably have your files backed up, but I wouldn't count on it. You can still create a backup plan for these sites as well. Make sure all of your posts are coming to you via email or RSS and make sure you are backing up static page content after you create it. Then package it all up and save it on a different server, not your local computer.

How or what is your process for backing up?

Problogger day eighteen post: Create a Sneeze Page and Propel Readers Deep Within Your Blog