2am: mobile rings. “Uh? Yes?”

“Our site has gone. GONE! And there’s something from the hosting company in the inbox saying they don’t have a back up. <voice goes up 2 octaves> We’re OFFLINE and it’s Hallowe’en.”

“Oh, yeah, um, right, hang on, ……Busy time for your product line. Give me 5 minutes, I’ll call you back. The site is backed up isn’t it?”

<voice goes up yet further to a wail>”I don’t know.”

“I’ll call you back, Make a cup of tea.”

I need to wake up.

It is only early evening in the US, and the client has not thought it might be the middle of our night when their disaster strikes. I struggle to rid my brain of midnight clouds…..

So, whilst we attempt to get to the bottom of the problem, I’d just like to point out to EVERYONE – you do have the latest copy of your website, don’t you????

Back up your site every time you make a change, and remember whose website it is. Yours… so the back up should be with you and an alternative held somewhere safe that is offsite.

Just a reminder. Even the most savvy people can get it wrong.

Kettle boiled, and I’m waiting for all the forwarded emails to arrive from the US….will let you know how it goes, but …..PLEASE…back up your site, blog, and everything else that matters.

And make sure your SEO company has copies of all work done on the website. You do not want to be re-inventing the wheel……costly process, that! Luckily I know we do. One less thing to  worry about for this client.

Tags: back up

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 at 2:35 am and is filed under SEO, Website Usability. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.