My Wordpress Disaster (Nearly)

As bloggers, we all have the same fear - losing our blog. We put so much hard work into our blogs that we nearly faint with the thought of losing it all. At night when we’re asleep, we toss and turn with the nightmare that in an instant, everything could be gone - forever.

Ok, so maybe not the nightmare part.
But losing our blog certainly is our worst fear.

Now, plainBETA has been online since May 10th, 2007. (For those of us who are slow at math, that’s about five months) Since then, I have not upgraded Wordpress once. After reading about how to make your Wordpress blog safer, I figured it would be a good idea to do so.

But I didn’t get around to it. I kept putting it off, and putting it off… And then I slapped myself and said, “Brian, just do it!” So, I did.
Or thought I did.

Turns out, I screwed something up - and my blog was gone. Completely and utterly gone. Thus began the scariest fifteen minutes of my life.

I worked and worked and worked, and finally got my blog back.

What did I do? I followed Wordpress’s Extended Upgrading Instructions.

How dumb can I get?

What You Can do to Avoid the Horror

1: Backup Your Blog
After that scare, I cannot impress how important backing up your blog is. And it’s not that hard! So do it!
Simply go to your Admin Control Panel > Manage > Export > click “Download Export File.”
For extra security, backup your Wordpress files in a secondary place - in addition to your computer’s hard drive. Simply placing the files on a flash drive, CD, or a service like Mozy can save you a world of pain.

2: Keep Wordpress Upgraded
Despite how scary upgrading Wordpress is, it should be done. Just be careful not to copy the ‘wp-content’ folder and your ‘wp-config’ folder, and you’re as right as rain.

3: Double Check Before You Click ‘Delete’
Have you ever accidentally deleted a file without meaning to? Yeah - me too.
When the file is on a computer it’s no problem - simply retrieve the deleted file from the trash bin. But when you’re in the internet, it’s a whole different story.
Web services do not move your information to a trash bin. When you click delete, it’s gone forever.
So before you click delete, pause for a moment and make sure you’re deleting what you want to.

So keep yourself safe!
Don’t lose that blog!