Comments on: In Case of Security – Planning for Blogging Disasters

By: Stupidity branches out - Homeland Security or Homeland Stupidity

Stupidity branches out - Homeland Security or Homeland Stupidity — Sat, 07 Jan 2006 04:47:24 +0000

[...] In the last week or so I’ve managed to guest blog two posts at two different blogs which you may be interested in reading (or may not care at all about.)The first, which was written before Christmas but only posted this week, deals with business continuity for professional bloggers. In other words, what happens when disaster strikes? I learned firsthand how important it is to prepare for disasters, both small and large, and shared some of what I know. It’s primarily through planning that I was able to survive losing my computer and continue writing this site (and my others), albeit at a much reduced capacity. If you intend to make a business of blogging, it’s a must-read, and must-act-upon. [...]

By: ANLAT

ANLAT — Sat, 07 Jan 2006 00:09:35 +0000

Thanks for all.

By: YWAM Information Technology

YWAM Information Technology — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 20:42:30 +0000

Now that we have the ability, let’s blog well…

Blogs in YWAM are starting to pop up little by little. Jeff Neely just launched his over at neelys.org and I spoke to someone at the coffee machine who is interested in starting one up as well.

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 18:37:22 +0000

Great suggestions on testing your backups, but what would be an easy way to test them?

Two choices that I use, there are probably more. First, I have a dedicated server with my host so I can log in and do whatever I want. I create a new folder (or sub-domain or whatever technique you like) and copy up the source code. Then I create a new database (since I don’t want to overwrite my production one) and alter the wordpress config file to point to this copy of the database. Then I restore the database backup. As long as paths are “relative” (meaning not hard-coded to your full domain) then everything should work.

I also maintain a linux server in my home office, and I can restore my source code / database backups to that server and test without affecting my “production” server.

By: Michael Hampton

Michael Hampton — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 03:35:38 +0000

And in what I could only call a cruel twist of fate, the unthinkable just did happen to me a few hours ago. My laptop bit the dust. I'm now on my contingency plans where I'm using a web-based feedreader (again), webmail, and essentially working from others' computers and public terminals.

By: miscblogger

miscblogger — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 23:13:04 +0000

you article just prompted ,me to backup my blog. thanks!

By: Cary

Cary — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 22:24:27 +0000

Great suggestions on testing your backups, but what would be an easy way to test them? I currently backup my WordPress blogs by backing up all the files on the server, and the DB is e-mailed to me each night via the WP Backup plugin…

Is there a simple way for the not-so-database-literate to test that their DBs are good?

By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 19:09:32 +0000

I used to work in the tech support department for a software company (now long gone) that made what was, at the time, the premium backup utlity. You can’t imagine how many tech support calls that I fielded from folks that were backing up religiously but had never tested their backups! The comment earlier about testing your restore process is absolutely just as important as running the backup process.

I’m paranoid. :-) I back up source code only after changes. There’s no point in wasting bandwidth on backing up something that has not changed. But I back up every database on my server (via a cron job run by “root”) every night. Later that night I have my home server (gotta love linux) ftp to my production server and download the resulting backup files. These files are copied to a RAID device. It’s only a mirror, but it still has two hard-drives instead of just one.

At any given point in time my most recent database backup is on the server. In the event of a data corruption event on the server, I can restore with at most a 23 hour 59 minute “lost data” window. If the server craters, I can upload the most recent source code / restore the most recent database and be up and running in about twenty minutes. I know this, because I’ve tested it.

Test your backups. In a few months, test them again. It’s like your smoke detector; it doesn’t do you any good if it doesn’t work.

By: herb

herb — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 10:29:29 +0000

I have now rendered the list harmless to viewers. This list was found by using MSN search engine. I was ‘backtracking’ some of my stuff when I came accross this. I felt that there are many people and sites that want to correct the problem (s) created by this person. So I posted the list. It now has inserted into it a 3 digit number in each of the URL ’s to prevent them from activation. Please do not remove the numbers unless you can with the “bugs” created. The list is at http://www.robertbenjamin.com/hackedlist/hacked.htm

By: herb

herb — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 07:06:03 +0000

I better make it clearer … the page I posted the list on is ok… just not the url’s in the list…

By: herb

herb — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 06:59:11 +0000

I just found a list of sites that were hacked …posted it at …
http://www.robertbenjamin.com/hackedlist/hacked.htm
I DO NOT advise going to any of the sites listed

By: Peter Mount

Peter Mount — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 01:52:31 +0000

With protecting your files on the hard drive it’s a good idea to keep them in a seperate partition from the Operating System. With Windows we were taught to create a seperate partition on the hard drive specifically for the data files. That way it is easier to back up the files, plus if Windows gets corrupted and needs re-installing the data files don’t get lost because they are in that seperate partition.

One good tool to have is a copy of Knoppix Linux on CD ROM. This is available for free download at:

http://www.knoppix.com/

Knoppix is a distrobution of Linux that can be booted from the CD Drive (as long as your computer is set up to allow this in the BIOS). If the Windows Operating System crashes you have the option of booting up Knoppix from the CD Drive and then be able to copy your files to an external device like a usb drive.

Have fun

By: wb42

wb42 — Mon, 02 Jan 2006 22:01:41 +0000

A couple of thoughts about bloglines – I use it for its interface with the Elicit blogging software. I make a quick run through bloglines, saving only the posts I think I’ll want to incorporate into my blog. Elicit has what they call a “docklet” that snags all the saved posts from bloglines. Then, you just highlight the portion you want, and drag it from the docklet into the edit window. Actually pretty slick. Elicit has similar docklets for Amazon, Chitika, Yahoo, Google, Technorati, etc. Using it that way, bloglines serves me well, although I do have FeedBurner still around for those times bloglines takes a dive.
Doug

By: Ray

Ray — Mon, 02 Jan 2006 21:33:03 +0000

Jon, have you read the first paragraph and seen what’s going on here at ProBlogger the past week? Darren didn’t write this.

By: Michael Hampton

Michael Hampton — Mon, 02 Jan 2006 21:32:00 +0000

I don’t use bloglines if I can avoid it. I prefer to have my feeds close at hand on my computer, and I’m VERY picky about how my feedreader works. With hundreds or even thousands of entries to look through in any given day, I have to have something that lets me work with them fast, and web-based feedreaders, by and large, do not.

By: jon

jon — Mon, 02 Jan 2006 20:56:55 +0000

I thought you used bloglines for your feedreader?

By: IO ERROR

IO ERROR — Mon, 02 Jan 2006 19:02:41 +0000

Automating backups is the only way to fly. I’m considering making automated backups of all my files to my iPod (since it has more space!) whenever I plug it in to the computer.

But just as important (and usually quite neglected) is: restoring! If the worst happens, you have to be able to restore all your data quickly. Make sure your backups are valid and contain the data you intended them to, and that you know how to restore them in the event of a disaster. The backup is completely useless if, when the time comes to use it, you can’t.

By: Ingoal

Ingoal — Mon, 02 Jan 2006 16:49:17 +0000

I guess everyone with a site who has ever encountered similiar stuff (db-server error, webhosting error, etc) can feel the pain and the potential devastating loss of critical data such as (web)content and email – whether it was caused by own faults (i.e. updates with broken files, accidently deleting stuff, etc) or by a system failure. Everyone who has encountered something like that should have learned his lesson and I guess most people have – doing a backup or two.

It’s human nature though to forget about things (again) rather quickly and hence the only way to stay ahead on such a critical task IMO is automation (to a certain degree). I decided that this was and is the only practical solution for myself. After moving (most of) my content to my own dedicated server I wrote a little backup (shell) script which will do the following:

1. backup all homeshares including the document-roots and all subdirectories of all hosted websites
2. dump all databases
3. backup all mails (I use imap so this is especially critical as there are minimal to none local versions)
4. zip all files generated in 1.-3. encoded with syntax (name.Weekday.file-extension) and save them to the second hdd of the server AND a remote backup location (a special backup-server in another facility of my host)
5. (not automated) I manually copy one of the files (usually the friday’s copy of any given week to a special “old” folder)..

This script is executed via cronjob every night, so I’ve got a current backup which will be valid for one week for every day of the week and with 5. a file history of more than x weeks…

People not familiar with shell scripts (linux) can have a look at my original post where I posted the source of my backup script.

By: A.H

A.H — Mon, 02 Jan 2006 15:21:38 +0000

Very helpful and awareness-rising, even though i don’t live in the U.S, i know my host’s servers are there and they’re not stable anyway, time to back up i guess =)

A.H