Note to Self: Back Up and Back Up Often

If you visited this blog in the last few hours, you might have seen something strange.

There wasn’t anything here.

It was all gone. Sure, the components of the theme were in place, the header, links, etc., but no posts. Nothing. Nada.

I had been having trouble saving post revisions earlier today, but I created a workaround by simply copying the articles into a new post and saving it that way. No big deal, right? Wrong. That was definitely a sign that there was trouble brewing. I worked on something else for a few hours, then came back to an empty blog. Not a good feeling, I tell you. 

My first thought was to do a database restore from backup. Well, ok, my host does an automatic weekly backup. But that wouldn’t help me, however, because I added a lot of content since the previous backup.  

I put in a support ticket with my host to get things started in case I needed help. They’re very quick to respond, but I figured while I waited I’d do some poking around. I logged into my Cpanel and checked the MySql database. Sure enough, my post database had crashed. Oy. 

Lucky for me, it was a simple fix.

I repaired the database and everything was all good again. I also went in and ran a repair on everything else. No problem. I had it done before my host responded. When they did answer my ticket 10 minutes later, it was already fixed. But don’t let me fool you – I had a moment (or two) of panic. 

So I consider this a lesson learned.

Backup regularly - Do yourself a favor. Don’t wait for your host to do it, do it yourself daily, at minimum. A few minutes could save you from losing all your work.