Sorry if I seem out of it, but literally, this just happened… This is a short story about how a little program, 5 minutes, and another designers blog helped save my life. Enjoy!

All is well after eating dinner with my dad. I finally had time to sit down and write a blog post about something. I was happy because I am usually so busy with a full-time job, social networking, reading other blogs, and my freelance graphic design business that I NEVER have time to sit down and compile a good story or list for a blog (hence the once a month posts. Lame I know).

I decide to change a little setting in the General area of WordPress's settings, when BLANK happens. Yeah, blank happened. It was like a dark hole made my blog dissapear, my login screen lost in the web-o-sphere and I was left with, well, nothing. 

I shit my pants, smoked a cigarette, had coffee, and thought about how I would have to start from scratch. Maybe it was a sign to redesign my website? Maybe it was a sign to learn how to back-up my WordPress blog and everything in it. I tried different URL's ending in wp-admin. I tried going back into Dreamweaver and sending my files back in from when I backed it up withing Dreamweaver. That didn't work. That didn't work AT ALL!

OMG, what was a helpless boy to do? I know I don't have that many blog posts as most others, however, I have a custom theme I built and I would have to do all that work over again, plus remember all of my posts, and all the images, and no re-tweets, and no comments, and all of my plug-ins. What? My head was spinning. Like literally, I felt like the girl from the Exorcist!

Then my coffee and espresso kicked in after I changed my undies and I remembered a little blog I saw from somebody that had a similar problem a couple of weeks ago (I would totally give credit where credit is due, but I don't remember who you were and what blog it was). I remembered downloading a plug-in called WP Database Backup. Then I vagly remembered backing it up. I was in luck! 

I was totally in luck. I went to the file that the plug-in sent me after I backed it up I didn't know what to do with it. CRAP. A little research and I remembered my PHP Admin through my webhosting company. I jump in there, searched around, and saw an import button. I import the file, and BOOM. I was back in business.

My advice to you

Download WP Database Back-up, configure the self-explanatory settings (it even sends the back-up file to your e-mail address!) and back your blog up! It took a couple of minutes but I don't care, and neither should you! It saved my life.

What If I Didn't Back-up Before My Last Post

You are still totally in luck through a little tool called Google! I give credit to the fantastic, inspirational Jacob Cass over at Just Creative Design. He went through a similar problem with his blog. So, remember your blog posts that you didn't get a chance to back-up.

Go to Google.com and search the name of your website and the title of your blog post (ex: anything graphic top 12 mac widgets). A search should come up with your link. The link will not work because it is not in your database for whatever reason you lost your WordPress database in the firlst place. But, look a little further after the description under the link and there should be a link called "cached."

Click. Copy your cached blog. Paste into a new blog post on your newly restored WordPress. Done! You have a restored blog that might not be totally complete, but a hell of a lot better than starting from scrach.

Thanks to WP Database Back-up, I don't have to start from scratch. I can rest assured that I will okay from here on out and making sure my WordPress database is backed-up after every post. Have you lost your database before? What did you do to cause it? What did you do to get it back, if anything?

Tags: backup, help, saving, wordpress

This entry was posted on Friday, February 12th, 2010 at 8:09 pm and is filed under Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.