I had another one of those “learn from experience” moments yesterday. If you tried to visit this blog any time over the last 3 days, you may have found my site down. It seems that my web host has been having some problems, particularly with their databases. When I finally called them last night to complain about my sites being down for the 3rd time in the day, they told me that they discovered that some of the databases had become corrupted, and they had to be deleted. When I asked if they had backups, they told me that the backups were corrupted as well (that is, they backed up the corrupted files, over the good files).

This made me realize just how important it is to provide myself a local backup of my data bases, just in case they happen to lose my data. I would hate to lose all of my blogs due to such a “bad luck” experience. I feel bad for the people who actually did lose their databases, because it means that they lost all the information from their blogs, and will have to start over!

So, I found a great plugin that will allow you to backup your WordPress blogs. You can find it by clicking here. Not only can you download the plugin, but you can find all the instructions for installing and using the plugin. But, don’t worry, it isn’t difficult. I am setting all of my blogs up to send me a back up by email every day. That way, I will never lose more than one day of data, which means only one or two posts on any given day.

If you don’t have a way to secure a local backup of your blog databases, make sure and get it set up. You cannot really rely on any web host to protect your data, as they can have the same problems as you and I can have. If they crash their servers, and their backups get corrupted, then you lose everything! So, just in case, backup your data locally, and then make sure to back up your backup! Call it overcautious, but it is better to be safe than sorry!