While I would never wish any harm on any bloggers site, backups or content this does happen everyday. I have known a few bloggers to be completely wiped out from existence over this and as you can imagine they just did not have the heart to continue afterward. I wanted to take a post out on this matter and raise awareness that being prepared is in your best interest.

While some will go over the top with 3 off site back ups a day I feel that may be a little excessive untill your success levels are so high that you may lose your shirt if you were to otherwise experience any downtime at all. But since for the most part I feel like I am addressing blogs like my own we will deal with this in a more real world situation for now.

First install the db back up plug in for wp. Run it daily, have it auto sent to a sleeping gmail account. Also save it server side and if your nutty mail it to another account which is local to where you write your blog.

Along with his back up your public html folder which your wordpress blog is stored in to a local folder daily. I believe a plug in may exist which can automate this just like the former as well which will speed things up and make this less of a pain in the but for you.

Just in case try to export your posts and content from your admin panel at least once a week and store them locally. This is great in case someone finds a new exploit in wordpress or your site or something and after a few weeks of comments disappearing and backups backing up this you can restore what was really supposed to be there.

If your like me you put alot of time and energy into your blog which is priceless. Along with these other insane methods I burn once a month to a cd the months content, dbs’ etc. I also load them on my nifty little iron key This way just in case my computer or cd’s are taken, damaged or blown away or even in a fire I have a copy on the usb drive in the fireproof safe as well as offisite.

The whole idea in being ready for disaster is to be back online as soon as possible. While you may be unable to post new content, you will still have a site up to post updates about the situation or in some cases to employ others to help you find out what happened.

Always be prepared for a worst case scenario, but also be realistic. If this is what you do for a living you may want to take extra precautions, but for my blog and I these are the methods which I use to stay up. I also have back up hosting with a live copy of the blog running in case something were to happen to hostgator, where i would just repoint the name servers and viola im back. I am a little over the top about this as I have said before I see where people are unable to post, quit posting or something outside their realm of control happens and the site is destroyed permanently. Take a minute and imagine that scenario and how easy it is to prevent yourself from being in that persons shoes.

How do you prepare for blog related emergencies?