The New Year rang in on my website with a resounding THUD. For about three days it was up and down. Some calls to BlueHost tech support were helpful, but the journey continued. Making Life Work For You seemed ok. My Beautiful Chaos was…in chaos. Even Chris Cree with his phenomenal blog superpowers couldn’t fix it…it was the server. It chewed on my database. A database which I had not considered backing up as it was on my hoster’s server.
If you are anything like me, you spend time and energy working up a blog site that is client appealing and personally reflective. I thought I was going to cry. Luckily for me, we got it back up and running with minimal fall out.
Today, thanks to a comment left on Chris’ post by Ozlady, I have been introduced to BlogBackupOnline. It is free up to 5MB while they are in Beta. The set up was easy and the 5MB limit was enough room to backup all three of my blogs with images. If your site is bigger than that, you can chose the medialess option. Now that the full backup is completed, it will automatically do a daily backup for new content and comments.
I don’t know what they are going to charge when they come out of Beta. I do know they have an export function that allows you to transfer your backup to your computer.
I also know that 2008 marks the end of my complacency in the field of backing up data.
Brian Wilson
January 4, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Thanks, April! This is incredibly timely and helpful because just today my local blog has shown signs of server-based malfunctions and all my posts have about half their content missing. Ugh! I’m going to check this out right now! Thanks again!
loren nason
January 4, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Blog Backup Online has saved my butt a few times in the past month
The only thing it only “sorta” restores comments. It will restore them but it does so by appending the comments to the end of the article. Not perfect but still a great solution
Robert D. Ashby
January 4, 2008 at 2:53 pm
Regular blog backing up is essential, not to mention regular “cleaning”. I usually do a backup to my hard drives, yes plural. Most exports can be done to a txt file which can then be imported if need be. It also helps when you are thinking of switching blogging platforms, like I am right now.
That being said, I think I would rather have my blog down for a few days than my entire internet access like I had for 3 days last month. Fortunately I have mobile broadband as well so I could still do most work, just slower connection speeds.
Larry Yatkowsky
January 4, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Have I missed something? If we are talking about the same BlueHost – it offers full/partial, automatic daily and weekly “zip” (not txt) back up capability delivered to your personal hard-drive-door via email.
While not intending an upsell of their service I am curious if I have missed something that demands attention.
Robert D. Ashby
January 4, 2008 at 8:32 pm
Larry – I use Typepad right now and the export I use as a backup has a choice of files. I simply use a .txt file for my purpose, which is partly that I am thinking of switching to WordPress. I am currently running the same blog on both TypePad and my own server and the txt file makes it easy to backup and switch data between the two. But, that is just me.
ozlady
January 5, 2008 at 2:37 am
Thanks for the reference, and I think that the BlobBackupOnline limit is 50Mb – not 5Mb.
Just a note to loren nason – contact the developers with your issues. I have found them to be really good and as the product is in Beta, they are really keen to get feedback from real users as to how their product is working or not working.
Good luck to all with your blogging!
ozlady
January 5, 2008 at 2:37 am
Blogbackuponline, not Blobbackuponline – man I hate typos!!! 😉