For The Love Of God, Save EVERYTHING!

I have recently endured an online tragedy and I’d like to help everyone else avoid the same pitfall. As the story goes, I wanted to change my domain name because it was RyanMMcMullen.com and that extra “M” was confusing (Michael is my middle name in case you are wondering). A state congressman from Oklahoma has selfishly taken RyanMcMullen.com, so I had to get a little creative. For some time, I’ve preached about proper domain names and had gone against my own personal rule by having the two “M”s side-by-side.

So, I bought my new domain, www.RyanMcMullenOnline.com and was excited to change my blog to reflect the new domain. Like an idiot, I did not back up my database. I changed it through my host and WordPress and lost everything! I know we’ve all had that sinking feeling when you know you just did something terrible. I felt sick, used some colorful language and was ready to throw the computer out the window. That’s how awful it was.

Once I collected myself, I spent roughly 3 hours on the phone with PowerHost and we couldn’t retrieve any of the information. As great as WordPress is, it doesn’t like major changes. Okay, no big deal, I can put together a blog pretty quickly and easily, right? Oh, it gets better. Not only did I not back up my database, but I didn’t save all of my blog posts either. Did I mention what an idiot I was?

I lost most of my content because I naively thought, “Hey, it’s online and the blog is one of the few things I control.” While our blogs cannot be policed or taken down like a FB page, YouTube or Adwords, we’re still at the mercy of the database.

I cannot stress to you enough how important it is to save EVERYTHING. Now, I back up my database regularly and save my posts multiple places. If I can save one person from having to rebuild their blog and content from scratch, this post will have been successful.

Here are directions for your WordPress database:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Backing_Up_Your_Database

My blog is not quite back to it’s original glory because I have a programmer working on new graphics and it’s missing content, but I did learn a valuable lesson to pass along to everyone: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, BACK UP ALL OF YOUR INFORMATION!!!

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