Backing Up WordPress : Learning Lessons the “Hard Way”

Phil

Hey guys! Today is going to be slightly different from my other posts. I’m not going to preach the rights and wrongs of being in business, and I’m not going to be focusing on a nugget of info that will make you millions. Instead, I’m going to talk about “learning from your own mistakes”, which is exactly what I have done in the last couple of months.

Now, many of you may remember that since we launched the Tip Team, I have published a few posts related to proper planning and business continuity etc. Unfortunately for me, because I have been so busy, I have managed to totally neglect one small, but very key area of operating my blog, which is now a prime source of driving traffic to my main business site… and it has gone completely against my own advice in these previous posts.

So, can anyone guess what it is that I “didn’t do”?

I didn’t take two minutes… yes, just two minutes… to backup major-business.net, and a couple of months back now I installed an update, which turned out to be a highly unstable update. As a result the entire backend of the site crashed, leaving no access and no immediate way of repair. The front end, miraculously, managed to escape any dramas; however, the effects of the problem were noticed.
A friend of ours, Mars Dorian, dropped me a line on Twitter having noticed that I hadn’t updated for a very long time, and a few of my contacts noticed that my Twitter and Facebook presence had dropped off to the point of been non-existent.

I’m pleased to say the site is fixed now, and I’ll be back posting again this week. But unfortunately for me this has been a huge setback on a number of levels:

1. The site has gone over two months with no updates or sign of movement, which does not help the search engine rankings, nor does it encourage repeat visitors
2. Rather than spending a few minutes backing up my blog I opted to save my precious time and leave it be, which in the long run has cost me over 120 hours of “repair” time… do the maths, I know now that a few minutes would have been far better spent
3. Traffic has reduced, although not much, but the quality traffic has been replaced with “spam” traffic… I now have up to 20 spam comments a day to delete from moderation, and of course now need to fight the spam monsters to eliminate it
4. My following has reduced on the likes of Twitter and Facebook, where many of my business connections are made
5. I have caused myself unnecessary stress and tiredness which has affected my overall performance, both professionally and on a personal level with my family

So, a lesson learned the hard way… I suspect that from now on taking an extra few moments just to ensure that I do the necessary things will not seem like so much of a chore. In fact, I’ll never look at the situation in the same way again!

I guess the point of me sharing this with you all today is not for me to be sent to sit in the naughty corner, nor is it a sob story, but rather it is hopefully a lesson that you can all learn from, without having to experience the “hard way”.

Phil has had many other businesses including Coaching, Marketing and PR, Graphic and Website Design, and Online Learning. His current venture is Phil Johnson Business Services, providing low-cost essential services to the newly self-employed and small and medium enterprises. Aside from this Phil runs Major-Business.net, a free source of quality help, advice, tips and tricks on many business and personal development subjects, catch Phil on Twitter

photo credit: dvs