You know you ought to keep backups of key information on your computer, and you’re probably pretty good about it. But if you’re like me, you may forget to backup your online information.
After having been burned on this before, I periodically backup my address book and my bookmarks. Thanks to a couple of reminders some time ago, I now remember to periodically make copies of my LinkedIn and JibberJobber contacts as well (and sync them with my Outlook address book at the same time).
But you know what I never, ever thought to backup? My blog files! Somehow, I’ve entirely forgotten to keep safety copies of files that are kept online. This was highlighted today because LiveJournal has just laid off 12 of its 28 employees, reportedly without severance. The LJ community is in a tizzy as this is seen as a sign that the site may go belly up. A friend suggested that those who use LJ should backup their entries promptly, which I did. And in the process, I realized that I should also backup my WordPress entries!
So it’s not a particularly novel idea to have a set day of the week or month to refresh files, but I will now add my blog entries to the list of files to update. What else should I be updating that I’m forgetting right now?
Too much stuff to backup!
If anyone has their WP blog self-hosted they can install a plugin to have the db automatically sent to your email. I do this on all my WP blogs… it is found here:
http://www.ilfilosofo.com/blog/wp-db-backup
- jason
I learned to back up my blog on the hard way. I almost lost everything and had a complete heart attack! I back it up once a week now.
Thanks for this heads up on backing up our blogs. I’ve thought it many times, but have done it yet, so this will probably be the tipping point. Appreciated.
Wow! Never thought about this. It would just be horrible. Thanks for the warning. I use to write the blogs in MS Word and then post to blog — but this caused some type of feed problem. I will be sure to back up tonight.
Thanks for sharing the information. I’m trying to remember to backup my WP once a week.
This is an astoundingly good tool for backing up your LJ. I use it and I love it. Even if I weren’t using it to backup my LJ I’d still use it because it is by far the best way to browse, index, and search your old entries.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ljarchive/
@Oscar: Yep, ljarchive is what I used. Very painless. And thank you very much for the other links, I’ll give them a look!
Right, and one more thing…
Backing up your truly critical documents/databases (protection from fire, flood, massive electrical surge, etc)
http://syncplicity.com/
2 GB and 2 computers for free. Backup, synchronize, and share data with others without them signing up or installing any software.
http://www.getdropbox.com/
2 GB limit, no limit to number of computers, backup, sync, and share data without them signing up or installing software.
My Outlook data gets backed up to my Blackberry, my blackberry backs my outlook calendar data to my gmail calendar.
If you use gmail you can setup imap or pop and have your mail local and on their servers.
Want to backup your entire hard drive to a secondary geographical location? Like a friend or families house?
http://www4.crashplan.com/landing/index.html
Data is transmitted and stored encrypted and seems totally safe. None of the data goes through their servers if I understand it right, and you can seed the data. Meaning that you can make an initial seed of the data (a copy) on an external hard drive, and take it to your friends house, setup the software, and after that only the changes will get sent. Pretty awesome stuff.