Work From Home 4 Life

You are merrily creating niche sites and blogs when the unthinkable happens…

You mistakenly delete a MySQL Database for a blog and you LOSE THE LOT!!!

What do you do now? Is there an undelete button somewhere?

So why am I writing about this?

Because it happened to me!

Last week I lost this entire blog - EEEKKK!!

And I have found out when talking to others, it has happened to them!

IN SHORT: There is no un-delete button so you need to back up your MySQL Databases or rebuild your entire blog from scratch. That’s what I have just completed doing over the last week or so.

Now fortunately for me I had all the basic ‘content’ on my PC because I always compose my posts and pages in a word processor first before posting them into my blog. I use MSWord to spell and gramma check my work

However, I still needed to “rebuild” my work-from-home blog from scratch by creating a new database, setting up WordPress and re-posting all my posts and pages.

All is not lost… I used the experience to consolidate my knowledge of creating a WordPress Blog and the NZPCS Million Dollar Program Stage One. I also took the opportunity to learn how to backup my MySQL databases.

So to save you all the pain of my last week I will share some hints so you can learn from my mistake and hopefully not make it or in the very least recover quickly from it.

Naming your MySQL Databases

As we are creating a lot of niche blogs I find it easier to track them by giving them the same basic subject name as my Blog.

For example: My First Guitar Blog = myfirstguitar (database name)

Quite logical when you think about it but when you are new to all of this you can find yourself completely in the dark.

Backing Up Your MySQL Databases

This is imperative! I suggest you do it at least once a week especially if you are posting frequently or using ‘Auto Blog” or “RSS Feeds”

1. Create a ‘MySQL Databases Backup’ folder on your PC
2. Go to your cPanel X
3. Click on Backups icon
4. Look for ‘Download a MySQL Database Backup’
5. Underneath you will find your MySQL database name in link form
6. Right click on link and select “save link” or “save target as”
7. Save zip file in ‘MySQL Databases Backup’ folder on your PC
8. Do this for all your MySQL Databases
9. When you next backup you will be asked if you want to overwrite file - SAY YES!

That’s it. Not as hard as I first thought it might be.

And if you have a catastrophic MySQL failure you can upload the back up file using the “Restore a MySQL Database” facility on the Backups page.

If you back up regularly the most you will lose is a couple of posts.

To Your Work From Home Success

Dee

PS: Auto Backup of MySQL Databases

Thanks to Wilf I can share a way to automate the back up process.

1. Connect to “cpanel” on your “host”

2. Click on the “cron” icon.

3. Select “advanced” (Unix Style)

4. In the “command” area type /bin/tar -cvf /home/xxxxxx/public_html/yyyyyyy.tar /home/xxxxxx/public_html/yyyyyyy

5. In the “Minute Hour Day Month Weekday” areas type 0 0 * * *

6. Click on “commit Changes”

There is a space between yyyyyyy.tar and /home

You can simply copy and paste the above and then change.

xxxxxxx = your cpanel logon id.

yyyyyyy = The directory name of your blog. e.g. /bin/tar -cvf /home/wstaton/public_html/work-from-home.tar /home/wstaton/public_html/work-from-home