February 3

Are you ready for a blog crash?

0  comments

No matter the size of the company, no matter who you are sometimes your website crashes. Have you considered what would happen if your website or blog crashes? Do you have a disaster recovery plan?
website-crash
Wacom Tablet’s support site had a 500 error.
This reality has forced me to consider every aspect of what I am doing online. For starters, I haven’t taken the time to back up my data on a regular basis. Also, I do not know how to quickly restore the site if it crashes. This needs to change. Considering that I build blogs & websites, teach blogging insights and consult with you people on all of the above … this is flat out irresponsible of me. So here we go, let’s do this together.

A few ideas on Blog Backup & Safety

1. Install a WordPress Backup Plugin

wordpress-backup-plugin

WordPress Backup

MAKE SURE YOUR FILES & DATABASE ARE SAFE. ROLLBACK YOUR DATA WHENEVER NEEDED.

2. Username and Password

Hackers are fun to watch on TV but they sure suck in real life. Over the years, we have dealt with  more than our fair share of hacking and helping clients’ get their DDoS situations resolved. One of the best things that you can do to prevent hacking is to make sure that your username is not ADMIN.

When you install WordPress on your server, the default username is ADMIN. If you are installing WordPress for the first time, go ahead and change that. If you are past that initial install, go to users and create another user account with a different password.

Next, make sure that you have a secure password. Try and make your password greater than six characters and include lower case, upper case, symbols and numbers. It always seems like a pain until you realize how easy you made it for someone testing your site security.

3. Use a Hosting Company that does backups

I have this blog hosted on Media Temple and I love them because they specialize in WordPress hosting. The other wonderful thing about them is that they keep daily restore points for me. If I need to restore my blog, I just log in and pick a restore date (see in the image below).

wordpress-hosting-company

4. Delete unused Plugins

5. Delete unused Themes

6. Keep WordPress up to date (with a warning)

This is the one of the best things besides changing your username and password that you can do to keep your blog secure. However, this tip comes with A SERIOUS WARNING. It is possible that when you update WordPress your theme could break (especially if it has a lot of custom coding) or that your plugins will not be compatible and your website will crash.

If someone else built your blog or website my advice is to ask them if they have a maintenance package that is reasonable. I don’t say this because I am a developer and I want people to pay me monthly [Ed. Note: Yes, she does]. I say this because I am a developer and I have had plenty of people that turned down such a maintenance package and then broke their own site by updating things.

Before you do a theme or plugin update on your own, PLEASE check and see if your theme developer has an updated version that you should install. Shoot that developer an email and ask them if they would be willing to help you or if they have any tips. If you are updating the blog yourself do a backup of the site before you update. If something goes wrong do not panic, just restore that backup.

7. Keep an eye on Plugin Updates

There is a particular plugin that I love to use and at the end of the year, it was having some serious troubles. Hackers had found a way to enter servers using this plugin. This was a MAJOR HACK and hosting companies were shutting down websites left and right that were using this plugin. The hosting companies did give a warning that the plugin needed to be updated before they just killed the sites. The plugin company was extremely pro-active, created a patch and gave it away for free. However, if you didn’t catch this in time, your site was taken down. These things happen sometimes but the good news is, it is easy to resolve and move on. One, pay attention. Two, back up your website/blog often.

[su_box title=”What do you think?” style=”noise” box_color=”#c1671d” radius=”12″]One, pay attention. Two, back up your site often. [/su_box]

[su_note note_color=”#ffb766″ radius=”5″]Do you have a blogging or blog platform question? If you do, how about we jump on a call. Email me and we will set up a time for a free 15-minute conversation. [/su_note]


Tags

Blog Backup, Website Backup, Website Crash Site, WordPress Backup


You may also like

Let’s talk about revenue

Let’s talk about revenue

Are You Willing?

Are You Willing?
Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked

{"email":"Email address invalid","url":"Website address invalid","required":"Required field missing"}

Get in touch

Name*
Email*
Message
0 of 350