WordPress’ backup system is a great insurance policy.
I’ve been using WordPress’ official backup system VaultPress since a few days after it launched. I like how simple it is, backing up your entire WordPress blog constantly without any interaction.
This week my $40-a-month subscription paid off. I got an instant message from a reader notifying me that they couldn’t read any of my articles. Confused, I went to the site and had no problem seeing the articles. It turns out they were using Internet Explorer, which had a problem, whereas my Firefox browser didn’t.
Since the reader just started having the problem that day, I looked back to see what changes I had made to my site. I added two ads earlier in the day, so I figured that was the problem. Yet I didn’t have a backup of my theme from before making the changes. I was struggling to find the exact problem in the code.
VaultPress to the rescue. I logged into VaultPress, which had an hourly backup of my entire site. I downloaded the template files from before I made the changes, uploaded it, and presto — problem solved.
If you have a WordPress blog of any importance, I highly recommend this service.
Jamie says
Interesting that an ad code block would cause that problem, but I have seen a > take down a site via WP if done in the head section, but not always in just one browser.
Andrew Allemann says
I had basically forgotten a closing tag
Jeff Edelman says
You would think that ad codes could never screw up a site, but we have had that happen to us a number of times. It’s very frustrating.
Owen frager says
There is a wp plug in that backs up and emails to you at a time u set. Mine are daily
Is this not good enough?
Morgan says
Nice – thanks for sharing Andrew! Just applied foe the beta – sounds like an excellent tool.
Andrew Allemann says
Owen – i used something similar. But its a small price to pay for something built by wordpress.
the suborbital space tourism is TOO dangerous says
.
always DO backups of everything! e.g. the TrueImage’s backup have saved me dozens times after total PC’s crashes!
don says
Ive added vaultpress recently as well, the whole database drive part of wordpress is the only real downside to a terrific program as you cant ftp data files easily…hopefully its just a good insurance plan