What Everybody Ought to Know About WordPress Backup

I was a bit careless and I lost a whole Blog. AND I DIDN’T HAVE A BACK-UP! Big panic, much self blaming, ‘Oh dear, how sad’, and ‘Now what do I do?’

• Use Google Cache to Recover Your Data
  

Panic over when I realized that most of the info was still recorded in the Google Cache, so I IMMEDIATELY did a full search and saved all the pages off G back to my hard drive. This gave me the text of each post, and also the pictures.

• How to Back Up

So how do you back up your data? It’s really easy - log in to your Admin control panel and click the Manage tab. There is a top menu item called Export, so click that, then click the ‘Download Export File’ button to bring up a dialog where you can choose how to name and save it to your own hard drive.

• How Did it Happen?

Well this is what you DON’T do! I did an upgrade from 2.5 to 2.5.1. I deleted all the files on the server as instructed, and loaded in the upgrade. I navigated to MyDomain.com/wp-admin/update.php and hit the enter button. And it all turned to custard! The error message came up like: “You already have tables in your database……” So I “Dropped” them. And all my data went slithering down the tube to limbo………….. I had backed up the data from ANOTHER BLOG by mistake, and when I did the “Import Back-up” trick it was all the wrong data. Please feel free to jeer! I think I should be thoroughly jeered at for 10 minutes every morning BEFORE breakfast for a week to reinforce the message of -

• “Do regular backups!”

So There you go, that is what everybody ought to know about Word Press backup!