Recently I learned a very important lesson about WordPress when not one, but two, women I know lost part of their blogs.
As far as I can tell, their databases somehow corrupted leaving one woman with no blog posts and the other with no pages.
Because we took the appropriate steps both blogs were fully restored.
Would you know what to do if this happened to you? Let's back up a minute so I can explain what I am talking about.
WordPress runs on a database.
A database is information placed in tables so that it can be retrieved easily when WordPress calls for it to be loaded onto a web page.
Someplace in MyPhpAdmin - land is where your database lives.
Many hosting companies allow you direct access to your database.
Most of us have never gone to MyPhpAdmin-land - and never will.
We just post our blogs the way we always did, confident that the universe is doing what it's supposed to be doing.
For most of us this cozy little world we live in will never, ever change.
But, every once in a while something happens to that database.
It could be a WordPress version update that breaks the database, it could be a plug-in conflict.
Most times we will never know the reason it happened.
We will just wake up one morning to find out that our posts or pages (or worse, our posts and pages!) are gone.
Tips to Survive a Database Malfunction 1.
Stay calm.
Accept the fact that technology malfunctions.
There's probably nothing you could have done to prevent this from happening.
And freaking out doesn't get your blog back.
2.
Become proactive.
Make sure your database is being backed up on a regular basis.
I use a plug-in called WP-DBManager.
This plug-in backs up your database on a regular schedule that you pre-determine.
You should back up as often as you post.
If you post weekly, then you want to back up weekly, etc.
This plug-in will also optimize your database.
Each time WordPress calls for information, there's a good chance that it won't be put back in the right order.
Just like you need to "defrag" your computer, your database needs defragging also.
3.
Find out if your host backs up your database and what you need to do to ensure that they do it.
Also ask them if there is a charge to restore the database in the event of a catastrophe.
In both cases above the hosts had backups.
The first host only backed up monthly and discarded old backups.
They also charged $100 to do the restore.
The second host didn't automatically back up databases.
I had to go in to the control panel and tick a box that asked for the database to be backed up.
But in a time of crisis, they had several restore points available and I was able to do it myself with, again, a tick of a box.
4.
Go to your blog often.
In one of the cases above, the site was down a while before we knew that her pages were gone.
It was less than a week but it may have been more than a few days.
How long can you go with your site down? 5.
If you find out you didn't have a back up system in place, you can try using Google Cache or the Way Back Machine to see if they have copies of your old pages.
I've used that method in the past to find old things I've deleted then changed my mind and decided I wanted.
6.
This may not be the best alternative but if you want to be super-sure that you have backups, you can keep copies of all your posts and pages in Word documents and store them on your own file back up system.
Of course you can't keep comments backed up this way.