I was recently traveling and waiting for my flight when I got a notification from Facebook from a peer that he needed my assistance. The FB message was an attempt to contact me in the event that I did not the email that was also sent to me.
So, when the message popped up on my phone, I jumped on to FB and asked if I should call him. The response was a very quick, “Yes, Please!” along with the phone number.” At this point, I did not have a good feeling!
I have a client (We will call him Robert) that lives in South Africa. He has a few websites that I maintain for him so he can keep to his core competency. He does some political analysis and wants to focus his time on his speaking, writing, and creating content for his site. He does not want to deal with backing up his site and keeping everything up to date. On a weekly basis, I go in and make sure all is well, optimize his database, make sure it is safe and secure, and do a triple back up. A triple back up means that I keep a copy of his site on my removable hard drive in my office and I keep two separate offsite copies (both of which are off his server). When it comes to safety, I am a bit fanatical!
Anyway… My client also hired someone else (we will call him Scott) to move some files around between sites for him. To make a long story short, Scott copied the wrong files to the wrong site. It was an inter-mixing of sites. This was NOT a good thing. Maybe Scott should have zigged but instead, he zagged. I certainly do not fault this person for making a mistake, as we all make them (if you ask me about the time I deleted an entire website for a client during development, I might tell you about it!)
The phone call went something like this:
Scott: I know that you back up Robert’s sites for him. I was moving some files around and I overwrote the uploads directory from one site to another. The problem is that I overwrote the wrong site. OMG! It is GONE!
Me: I am waiting to board a plan shortly, but let me see if I can access the backup files from the airport. I will give you a call back in about 10 minutes.
Scott: Ok – great! Thanks!
And we hang up. Now, if that was me, I would be freaking out. Fortunately, knock on wood, cross your fingers, I have never had to tell a client that I wiped out their site! Because this was the uploads directory, all the files that Robert ever uploaded to this site were gone! That included the video on his home page, all the images on the site, and even any downloadable files! This would be a nightmare to recreate.
Because I backup client files to a highly secure 256-bit encrypted site in the cloud, I was able to get the backup file. The only issue I had was the connection at the airport was slow. While the file was downloading, I called back Scott to let know that I could access the backup file and that I would send the missing files to him so that he can correct his mistake.
After sending some data over the internet, Scott was able to access them and restore the site! All’s well that ends well.
The moral of this story is simple – always make backups of your site! Always. It should be on a regular basis, and it should be consistent without fail. If you don’t do it, get someone else to do it.
If you are interested in having me perform the backups and maintenance of your site, you can see what I offer over at https://digitalmaestro.com/services/#monthly – In Scott’s honor and to show how important I think it is to back up your site, I am offering a 25% discount off the price of the service. Shoot me an email over on my Contact page and we can talk!
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