I put on my detective’s hat and spent a reasonable amount of time the past couple of days trying to figure out why my backups wouldn’t work. I just kept isolating the problem until I found the answer — it has nothing to do with my hosting service’s backup program, it was that the program my Mac uses to unzip the files was acting flaky. (Files are usually compressed for efficiency before they are downloaded or uploaded. “Unzip” means to expand them back to their original form.)
Anyway, as expected I learned a lot, and in the process I’ve simplified the way I do some things. Part of the simplification was to sign up for Sucuri, the company that monitors my site for malware, to do my backups. It will backup daily — a lot more often than I do now! — and save me from messing with large files. For $5 a month, it’s a bargain.
My philosophy is if you have to go through the nuisance/pain/whatever, you might as well get something for it. In this case I’ve gained a lot.
August 25, 2015
magic words to me always … “i’ve simplified the way i do things” 🙂
i’m so happy it’s turning out well.
I’m always looking at ways to simplify. It’s a great hobby. 🙂
I will explore Sukuri.
It’s at sucuri.net.
Are you backing up just your blog?
Or backing up everything on the computer to something.
I back up nothing.
What am I supposed to be backing up?
duh.
Evidently, it’s amazing that I can post on my own blog.
LOLOL!!!
a kindred soul.
god i love this person. 🙂
😀
This post is just about backing up my blog. I’m not sure it’s even necessary because once when I was changing things my blog here disappeared and my hosting service had a backup and everything was restored. The tech support person I talked to thought I shouldn’t have to pay Sucuri to do regular backups because Hostmonster does it every night and it’s unlikely I would ever lose something. But the site itself, probably for legal reasons, says don’t count on them, we need to do our own. So what I’m doing is more a redundant, belt-plus-suspenders approach.
I do back up my computer to an external hard drive about hourly, but that’s done automatically on my Mac, so I don’t have to think about it. If there are files on your computer you want to make sure are safe, little flash/thumb drives are a fairly inexpensive and easy way to save them somewhere else. We have gazillions of pictures and have saved them on several flash drives. If you ever want more information I’d be happy to talk to you about it. You have my email address.
Does one need to understand this stuff to blog? Of course not! That’s why Blogspot and the free sites at WordPress.com are there, so everyone can participate. Notice that Rummy and tammy each have their own IT experts taking care of things for them, and we’re all the beneficiaries. 🙂
I would have done the same thing! And there are some things you can’t put a price on!
I discovered sucuri.net when someone had messed with my blog and it took me hours and hours to get it straightened out. Since then the company found one instance of malware and removed it. I didn’t have to do anything but put in the request. That’s invaluable.
my problems with the Net connection has got to a point where I know I need my own – have set that in the process of chatting with geeky family who will assist to get it all set up!
I’m at the library yet again – actually I don’t really like the library, some strange souls come here!
there is man rabbiting on about being homeless and young girls trying to do something with him at night – plus he is swearing a lot! The woman sitting next to me is really nice and like me she would like him gone…the “help guy” has spoken to him twice!
I’m glad you have help.. Setting things up can be such a pain, and your library doesn’t sound like a very nice place.
Oh ok!
I do think a couple of years ago on another computer I backed up my blog.
I read how to do it on Blogspot HELP.
Now I better do it again, now that we have talked about it, rather than tempt fate.
LOL!
And I did that flash drive thing to my old photos when the old computer started blacking out periodically, so I was able to transfer them to this laptop.
I swear, I just know enough to get by.
Hmm. Reminds me of my approach to school.
😀
Learning more than you need to is a waste of time unless you enjoy it. It sounds to me that you know just enough, especially with all the other things you have to deal with. I think it’s great that we can do so much without having to become experts. We have powerful stuff at our fingertips.