As you probably know, I run the Liverpool Acoustic website at liverpoolacoustic.co.uk. Earlier this year I moved it from a static HTML/CSS-based website to a lovely new WordPress version using a theme called Caulk. I really don’t know why I put the move off for so long (lethargy is a real bind…) but am really pleased that I eventually took the time to find the right theme for my needs, and to make the move to a more useable, interactive, and fun system. I love WordPress!
Another thing I’d been putting off for ages has been setting up a regular backup of the Liverpool Acoustic website. I was spurred into action following the recent failure of my home external drive which Time Machine uses to back up my iMac. That period of time between the old drive dying and the new drive arriving in the post was strangely worrying. If anything had happened to my iMac I wouldn’t have had a backup, and I would have lost everything. Fortunately everything was OK and I’m now fully backed up again, although I am investigating the options for creating online backups of my content to cover me in the unlikely (but not impossible) event that both my iMac and backup drive get stolen or lost in a fire/flood/hurricane/alien invasion (delete as appropriate).
So yesterday I eventually got round to signing up to VaultPress – this is an online service that makes real-time backups of self-hosted WordPress sites. It backs up the whole site: database, files, images, posts, comments, drafts, plugins, themes. Everything. It costs $15 per month for one site which equates to just less than £10.
For me that £10 per month isn’t just a backup, it’s peace of mind. How do I know this? Because the day after I signed up to VaultPress I updated one of the plugins and the admin side of the site crashed. I couldn’t even log in to uninstall the plugin. Yes, I could have accessed the site using FTP and manually deleted the plugin, but there’s no knowing what changes it might have made to other coding elsewhere on the site. So, less than 12 hours after signing up to VaultPress I used it’s simple interface to restore the previous rogue plugin-free version of the site and hey presto everything was back to normal. Woo hoo!
The moral of the story is to backup your local data and backup your websites. And do it NOW because tomorrow may be too late.
VaultPress
vaultpress.com
(DISCLOSURE: I’ve not been paid to write this, and there are no affiliate links to the site!)
