How stupid of me to have no backups of my blog. Really. No excuses.
For a long time I had quite a clever backup solution. There is a WordPress plugin that can periodically make backups of the database and it can even send the backup to an email account. The only problem is, that it does not delete the local database dump. With dump sizes of about 50 MB, I had - unknowingly -a sizable collection of backup files on my server, and that’s against JustHost’s terms of service.
Of course they never found out - until they had to move my account to the “Faster Server”. When they did, they asked me to remove the backup files first, I did so, and I also disabled the backup plugin. I fully believed I would look into the problem of the locally stored dumps soon, and then I would enable the backup plugin again. Instead I simply forgot about it.
In a way I had always expected JustHost to make daily backups, but obviously they don’t, and when I think of what I pay, I can understand it. It’s simply not economically viable and it can’t reasonably be expected. They had a backup around, the one from September, and that’s what they used. My last backup was from the same time, and there I was, deep in trouble.
Story to be continued – Image made with my Nikon 50/1.2 AI-S – The Song of the Day is “Who Will Rescue You” from the 1996 album “The Carla Bley Big Band Goes To Church”. Hear it on YouTube.