(This is a continuation of my 5 part post  20. I Wanted to Make My Own Mistakes, Until I realized that It Was Much Easier to Let Others Screw Up. ) 

Most Web Hosting services automatically back up their servers on a daily basis, which means your information is regularly backed up by your Host. If for some reason you either loose or change a file, you can request that your host restore that file. Make sure that you let them know where you want the file restored too. I often request that it be put in a separate folder that I create, so I can control what information is going to be replaced. This is especially important if you have an e-commerce site, because sometimes even if you loose information, you may still be able to keep the site running, and you don’t want your Host to restore a database with old orders and overwrite the new ones that came in for that day.

Some Hosts to restores for free others have a service fee (My Host for www.label-land.com charges $25 for a restore request). Don’t be too quick to nix a host that charges a fee, they are often much faster with restoring your files (my blog host does the restore for free, and I am still waiting).

Choose Next Lesson

22. Accessing The Minds Of Technical Wizards.

23. Cache. An Invaluable Internet Currency.

24. Did I Mention “BACKUP!”

Well, as most of you know, last week in a moment of gifted brilliance, I managed to delete all my posts comments and drafts. Though I managed to restore my posts, I still have to manually fix all the comments, and my drafts are lost (this is particularly annoying because I had over a dozen ideas that I had been working on). Needless to say this could have been prevented if I had been backing up my blog.

In my youth I recall having a conversation with my mother. She was trying to give me sound guidance, and try to educate me based on the experiences that she had, and all I could say was “I want to make may own mistakes and learn from them, those were your experiences I want mine.”  I was young and foolish. With age I realized something important.  If it is something postive/enjoyable/uplifting, experiance it for yourself. If it is something negative/uncumfortable/humiliating, then learn from others who went before you, let other peoples screw-ups be your learning tool.

On this note I will suggest that you stop reading this post and go back up your blog/website/computer. I will still be here when you get back.

If you are using WordPress it comes with a backup in the plugins.  Just activate the pluging, go to “Manage” then “Backup”, and follow the instructions.

For backing up your website you can download the site onto your computer and burn it onto a cd.

For your computer there is usually backup software in the Accessories or something similar.

Alternateivly you can read Martin Cleavers post Amazon S3 + JungleDisk + IBID + Windows + … , it has some great informaton on web based backups.

I’ll wait now……………………..I never noticed that hole in the ceiling………….

Alright now that you have everything backed up, lets continue with all the things I learned from erasing my blog.

You can go in order or choose what interests you.

21. Often Your Best Resource for Lost Web Data Is Your Host.

22. Accessing The Minds Of Technical Wizards.

23. Cache. An Invaluable Internet Currency.

24. Did I Mention “BACKUP!”