Don’t Let This Happen To You
July 30, 2007
Ok, the first thing I’m going to share with you has nothing to do with local business per se, it’s a valuable reminder for any business that has a website and relies on that website for income.
Make sure that your website is backed up at all times and can be restored at a moment’s notice. You’d think that someone who has been online for as many years as I have wouldn’t get caught looking the other way.
Yet, while I was in California on vacation, my server was hacked, along with many others hosted with my ISP. I found out about it last week, 2 days after I got back.
Theories abound as to how it happened, but finger pointing and the blame game can come later… the important thing was to restore each of the 76 sites on my server to its original state. The sites looked normal at first glance, but some nasty code had been added to many of the pages that made Google think that we were distributing malware. Not good.
I thought I had prepared for this — daily backups had been scheduled when I first got the server. I made it very clear that backups were important and needed to be done like clockwork. And they were. At first.
Do you see where this is going?
Yes, at some point, somehow, some way, I ran out of space and didn’t have enough for backups anymore. The drive was 60% utilized and the backups are zipped so there should have been enough space, but whatever. The last backup was 2 months old — arrgh!
Ok, well, no use whining about it after the fact. I rolled up my sleeves and went to work. Got the server people to run a script to clean all the pages. It took 3 times, but it finally worked.
Next, the issue of backups. In addition to the scheduled backups on the server, I signed on with an external company so they will be maintained in another place. Daily. Automatically. No running out of space.
Finally, find another hosting company, one that specializes in dedicated servers. That took the longest but I finally decided on a high end hosting company that will actually manage the server for me, keeping an eye on things and making sure nothing like this happens again. And to be on the safe side, I hired an external server management company to fill in any gaps in the hosting company’s coverage.
Yes, it’s going to cost me a couple hundred dollars more a month for all of this “insurance” but if it will keep me from having to endure another week like the one I just went through, it will be so worth it.
And now, I need another vacation!
Last 5 posts by Sharon Odom-Fling
- The Web Works for Local Business - April 8th, 2008
- Read "The Go Giver" - March 16th, 2008
- Is it the Death of the Blackberry? - January 9th, 2008
- Walk While You Work At Home - November 15th, 2007
- User Generated Content at the Local Level - October 20th, 2007
Sorry to hear that this happened. I’m glad everything is back up and running again. Thanks for the reminder, with the busy lives all of us have these things can be over looked very easily.
Oh my goodness! Thank you for sharing your “problem” with us. I never thought about backing up a website, and to be honest, don’t know how. I will definitely think about it now.
I’m glad that things worked out for you, but sorry that it was such an expensive lesson.
Oh no, sorry you had to deal with this! Thank you so much for the reminder and really I am lagging on this.
I only really have one site that I would be terribly upset to lose but I need to find out how to back it up and just do it.
Angela Wills
http://www.StarVA.com
Glad you pointed this out Sharon. I’ve been talking quite a bit about web site backups over the last year in WahmTalkRadio.com. I think half of the job is not only in having the backups but having a plan in place to quickly whip it out and use it.
My husband always asks me why I don’t just buy a dedicated server to put all my websites on. This is why. Yes, lost many web sites in the early days so now the sites are scattered through several web hosts.
Sharon that’s terrible! What an awful thing to come back to after you nice vacation.
I haven’t had to deal with this but have seen it a few times and I think it’s one of those things we tend to put aside until it happens.
I need to get some type of system in place too because it’s better to be safe than sorry. Thanks for sharing.
Wow! I can’t imagine having to deal with that! I’ve been talking about and even asking questions (at a couple different forums) about backups and how to go about doing it for about 6-7 months now and I’m ashamed to admit I’m still NOT doing it!
Sorry to hear what you had to go through but thanks for sharing your story and reminding me that backups aren’t an option - they are a requirement!!!
Wow what a thing to come home to after vacation! Sorry that this happened to you but at least we can all learn from this exerience.
Ooooh! I’m so sorry you had to deal with that. This is truly a wakeup call confirmation because I was just thinking about this subject yesterday. I hope everything is working out fine for you now.