The day started like any other. Cup of coffee at her side, Anna logged into her WordPress Admin panel to type a new post. Anna had been blogging for several months and had nearly 200 posts, so she certainly wasn’t expecting to see a blank dashboard and the terrifying words “0 posts”.
Her jaw dropped. How could this have happened? As she scrolled through her Admin panel desperately seeking for some clue, ugly words flashed through her mind: I’ve been hacked.
Lesson Number One: Always Back Up Your WordPress Blog
Anna was shocked by the experience, but she wasn’t too worried about getting her posts back. That’s because she uses WP-DB-Backup, a plug-in written by Austin Matzko.
How to Use WordPress Database Backup to Save Yourself Needless Stress
1. Search for the plug-in through your WordPress Admin Plug-ins panel and install it directly from there.
2. Once you’ve installed the plug-in, navigate to Tools > Backup to get started.
Here, you’ll decide how often you want to back up your WordPress blog files, and which files you want to back up.
The wisest option is to choose a scheduled backup. This way, you never have to think about your backups again. If anything should happen, you’ll have the latest version of your WordPress blog close at hand, ready to re-install.
3. Under “Schedule,” choose “Once Daily”.
If you update your blog only once a week, you might be tempted to back up only once a week rather than daily. But keep in mind that people may be commenting on your blog daily, and you’d lose any comments that were made after the last backup. So daily backups are the safest option.
4. Under “Tables to Include in the Scheduled Backup,” make sure all the boxes are ticked. No reason to exclude any files from your backup.
5. Scroll back up to “Backup Options.” You can choose to save your files to your server, have them automatically downloaded to your computer, or emailed to you.
Which option is best? Anna says, “I like having my files emailed to me. Since I use a Gmail account, I don’t need to worry about running out of space, and I just delete the older backups anyway. If for some reason my computer and server were to crash at the same time, I’d still be able to access my files through email”.
Once you’ve chosen your preferred backup option, you’re all set. You’ve now scheduled automatic backups. You can sleep easy now!
As an extra safeguard, set aside some time every week or month to manually copy your entire site onto your computer, using your FTP client.
Lesson Number Two: Contact Your Hosting Company First
Don’t panic! What looks like hacking may be something very different.
Remember how Anna assumed she’d been hacked? It seemed a pretty reasonable assumption at the time. After all, the posts were missing, and since she hadn’t had any security precautions in place, she knew her blog must have been an easy target for hackers.
The first thing she did was email her hosting company and tell them what had happened. Then she started researching options on the internet. (Even though she had her backup waiting to be re-installed, she wanted to learn how to defend herself against hackers first.)
Only a few minutes later, Anna received an email from hosting company. It said, “It does not appear that your site has been hacked. It appears that the posts table in your mysql database had crashed. I have repaired this, and all posts currently appear to load without issue. Please let us know if you have any further questions”.
Quickly, Anna reloaded her WordPress Admin panel. A smile spread across her face. There were all her posts, safe and sound. Good thing she hadn’t wasted time re-installing!
Better Safe Than Sorry
“I’m actually glad I had this experience,” Anna said. “Even though it turned out that I hadn’t been hacked, it scared me into educating myself. I’ve now installed protection against WordPress hackers, just in case”.
If you’ve never been hacked, don’t assume you won’t be. Anna was lucky this time – but she’s not counting on luck in the future.
What you need to do to enjoy peace of mind:
- Install WordPress Database Backup (or a similar plug-in) and schedule automatic backups today.
- Learn how to protect your blog against hackers, and don’t waste any time in setting up the appropriate precautions.
With these two tasks squared away, you’ll be able to focus on the important stuff – writing and publishing on your WordPress blog.
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