The Importance of Backups
Never ever EVER underestimate the importance of backups.
In fact, I’m writing this blog post in Notepad while this blog is having a backup generated (it doesn’t run in the background).
What does this have to do with marketing?
Oh nothing, and EVERYTHING!
Over the years, I have lost hundreds of megs of information, $1000s of dollars worth of stuff, I’ve lost websites, blogs, and pictures.
Pictures?
Yes, pictures, specifically digital family pictures that I will never get again.
And I’ve known about the value of backups for years.
What’s the problem?
Takes too many cds/dvds?
No. I mean yes, it would take a lot, but that’s not the problem.
No tape backup system?
No, but that’s not the problem either.
Procrastination?
Nope. I’m too lazy to find the time to procrastinate.
Bingo!
And I know that tends to be most people’s reason too. We all “know better” we all “intend to” you know, when we “get around to it”.
I can’t force you to make backups, but as we speak one of my main blogs, and my personal hobby, Saltwater Fish Keeping, is down and I don’t know how to fix it.
But doesn’t the host…?
Ah yes, the host. The host upon whom I’ve relied upon for many a year has failed me.
I’ve accessed the automatic backups that they make for sites for various sites of mine.
Their own backups of my site don’t work.
Currently it’s beyond my ability to fix, though I haven’t stopped trying. I don’t know anyone who’s a “behind the scenes” with Worpress person (in other words, a programmer who can look at the details).
But if I had made a backup, I’d have been able to handle it.
And no, I have no idea what happened. I didn’t update or install anything recently.
So here’s what I want you to do:
Download a free WordPress plugin called WP Time Machine.
Install it.
Use it.
You can do all that from your WordPress Dashboard…assuming you can get into yours (ahem).
It will make a full backup of your blog and deposit a copy to Dropbox (free for the first 2 Gigs), Amazon’s S3 (some cost but excessively cheap) or your own FTP host (which kinda defeats the purpose in my opinion).
Personally I prefer backing things up on Amazon. I don’t want, nor need, to have the backups on every computer and device I use. Ties up a lot of disk space.
I know there’s other plugins that will backup parts of your blog, and you certainly don’t want to make a full backup too often.
But you need at least ONE!!
WP Time Machine will take time (no pun intended…this time) to run, which is why this post is being done in Notepad, but it’s worth it.
Especially if that particular blog brings in any kind of revenue, or customers, or new friends.
Besides, it’s a lot of work to reinstall everything, set everything back up, not to mention all the posts and pages you’ve lost.
Backups. Are they worth it? You tell me.
– Jeffery