Do you ever start watching something that is 2 hours long with the intention of only watching half now and the rest later, but realize you won’t be able to turn the TV off until you know what happens at the end? That was me last week on Tuesday. I got hooked and being able to fast-forward through the commercials became my excuse for not heading to bed when I should have. While skipping the last set of commercials, I got a text message. Obviously it must be important for someone to text me this late, so I had to check it out right away.
“StatusCake.com Alert – tinyblueorange.com is currently down.”
After verifying on my iPhone and iPad that my site and the personal sites I have on that same server weren’t loading, I hopped on my computer to have a chat with my hosting company. They were already looking into the issue, and it was just a matter of waiting for them to have a solution.
I’ve been here before. Whether clients or personal sites, servers crash, blow-up, forget how to work for a minute, or get hacked. And while waiting for my hosting company to give an update, I went back to watching my show. I didn’t freak out because I have a plan. Worst case scenario – I spend a few minutes for each site installing the latest backup onto the new server that the hosting company provides me with.
What seems like many eons ago, one of my client’s servers was hacked and it turns out the hosting company wasn’t doing the backups that they claimed to be. We truly had to start from scratch to get the site and all of its content back online. It was awful, heart-breaking and a huge waste of time because it could have been avoided. Since that day, I have taken backups into my own hands (and switched hosting companies).
If you need a backup plan, I can help you out. I just created a WordPress Maintenance + Security Package that includes regular backups, as well as site updates and site monitoring (which is what let me know my site was down in the first place.) Sound like something you could benefit from? Check out the details for this new package or sign-up right away.
PS – In case you were wondering, the good news is the server data was fine and within 20 minutes all of my sites were back online without me needing to do any work. I love when stories have happy endings, don’t you?