Rarely a day goes by that I don't learn some new lesson about doing business online.
Some of those lessons are more important than others – and the lesson I learned last week was a doozy.
I'd just spent the better part of a day reconfiguring this site with a new framework and theme, uploading a bunch of new articles to be scheduled for later delivery.
Sometime late in the evening the site went down, so I filed a support ticket and headed off to bed, fully expecting the site to be back online by morning – as had been the case for the years since I started working with my hosting service provider, Steve Hetrick.
I was very surprised when not only was the site not back online in the morning, but the support ticket hadn't yet been answered. I repeated the request and added “is everything OK?”
Everything was definitely NOT OK.
I started checking my other sites on the same server and they were all down. The only site still online was Affiliate Blogger PRO, which resides on a separate server. I hastily did a backup of that site and then started digging deeper.
Not only were my sites down, but Steve's business site, DataWordPro was also down.
Now I suspected that something was really, really wrong.
It didn't take long to confirm my suspicions.
Numerous folks had posted to the Warrior Forum citing similar problems with sites that were hosted with Steve. As I read through the threads I came to a post that shocked me to my core – that Steve had passed away suddenly on January 25th, 2011.
I was grief-stricken.
Steve and I had conversed many many times over the years and I considered him a friend. Too, his customer service was second-to-none and I relied on him heavily to maintain my sites and servers. I could make a real mess of something, i.e. creating conflicts with plugins, and he always found and fixed the problem in record time. His services went way above and beyond what a ‘normal' hosting service provider might offer.
That was to be no more – so I had to figure out what had happened to the sites and how I would recover them — without Steve's help.
I learned that Coast Inc. was the company from which Steve leased our servers, so I contacted them. If their responses seemed a little slow, it was because Steve had over 1500 customers in the same boat and some of their sites had been affected much earlier than mine.
Here's where I got to feeling a little brain-fried having failed to heed the tried-and-true “plan for the worst and hope for the best” philosophy.
I hadn't really planned for the worst having only 2 full and current backups having always counted on Steve's weekly backups which had never failed before.
Unfortunately, only RosalindGardner.com and Affiliate Blogger PRO were backed up. A personal hobby blog, RosalindGardner.com was my lowest priority. And because we have a lot of members who count on the ABP site which runs Wishlist Member software, I was unsure if all the members' functionality would be in place if I went the D.I.Y. route to restore the site.
It felt like I was a little between a rock and a hard place with nowhere to turn.
What I did have however was an Aweber autoresponder account – which is something that I always sress as being a MUST-HAVE service if you do business online. Using Aweber, I could contact all my sites' subscribers and let them know what had happened – which is exactly what I did within hours of learning about the outages.
Because my ‘job' is to educate, I directed those with questions to my Facebook Page – another must-have for online businesses these days.
The best part about being able to get in touch with subscribers and members was not so much being able to continue doing business online – but to connect with them and receive their caring and concerned feedback. I can't fathom what the vacuum must have felt like for others who don't use those essential services.
After that, I contacted Coast Inc. daily for updates. I must say that although the responses were brief, John and Ethan and their staff were great – doing the best they could with a very difficult situation… even more difficult than I originally suspected.
Note: People have asked my why the sites went down just because Steve died. That confounded me as well, until the Coast Inc. guys explained that the folks on Steve's side became ‘unhelpful' after a short period. One can only guess that they had no interest in continuing his business, so they just couldn't be bothered with the hassle with which they were presented.
Anyway, deciding to ‘hang tight' and wait for the guys at Coast Inc. to gain control of and reinstate the servers turned out to be the best plan – even if we did have to wait 4 days. All the important sites are back online and working exactly as the did before the server outage occurred.
PHEW!
So, what have I done since?
- Well, all the sites are now running the WP-Database-Backup plugin on a daily basis – with backups being sent to my email address.
- I investigated the WP-Twin plugin wich allows you to clone, backup, duplicate and restore your site(s) within minutes. This looks like a really good alternative having just introduce an auto-backup feature.
What will I do in future?
- Well, for one, I will never again host my sites with a company run by a solopreneur – as good as his or her service might be.
- Too, I'll probably move one of my two servers to another hosting company, likely HostGator or BlueHost.
- Smaller sites will be moved to the other hosting company.
- I will keep each backup around for awhile, just in case more recent backups are corrupted.
- Most importantly, I will also employ the services of a programmer OUTSIDE any of the above hosting companies to check on the health of my sites and servers on a regular basis. I want to find someone as adept and thorough as Steve, who sees and can resolve software and plugin conflicts in the blink of an eye. (If you're up for the job, get in touch with me through RosalindGardner.com. 🙂 )
Too many people rely on my services to risk having everything go down at at once ever again.
In other words, I've finally learned the important lesson — don't put all your eggs in one basket!!
What a way to have to learn but it appears that you handled it very well. Thanks Rosalind for the helpful information in case one of us runs into similar difficulty. Continue to back up just to be safe is an old idea but not a bad idea.
In a weird way, I found this very encouraging. This shows you don’t have to do everything perfectly, or be a real technical wiz to make a lot of money at internet marketing. I appreciate your honesty. Not everyone would want to publicly admit it when they made a mistake.
Service is everything, and it is really worth paying for.
Thanks for the great advice on all the things to check out prior to a commitment for a hosting company. I guess though I am just one of millions who take it for granted that my host is one of the biggest, who should have it all. I guess some day I’ll need to take a drive to New York, Chicago or L.A. to get a good understanding of it 🙂
When choosing a hosting service, you should also think about the service’s hosting facilities, location, and procedures. How is your host connected to the internet? A host with a single backbone connection could be taken down by a construction crew inadvertently breaking an underground cable. A good hosting service should have connections to multiple providers. Where I have my sites located, they have connections to nine backbone providers, including Global Crossing, Sprint, Level3, and Verizon.
Is the host located in an area subject to frequent earthquakes, floods, hurricanes or tornadoes?
Does the host have people on-site 24/7 to take care of any problems that may arise?
Automatic backup of their servers?
Do they regularly test their backup generators, if they have them?
Consider the following additional features when choosing your host:
» Redundant Climate Control
» Uninterruptible Power System
» Standby Generator
» Fire Suppression System
» Physical Security – Cameras, locked doors, restricted access, etc.
Most major hosting services have all of the above, but you should verify this before signing onto their service.
Best Regards,
Gary
It is important always to:
1. Backup your websites on a CD, disk-on-key or an external hard disk drive, so that in case of a problem, you can fix it easily.
2. Check to see if your websites are working, 2-3 times a day.
3. There are services, paid and free, which monitor your website, and email you if your website is down.
4. Work with a good hosting company, and which offers upgrades when you need to expand..
Some lessons you inevitably can only be learned the hard way. I constantly tell my clients to backup there accounting data daily and independent of any “server” backup in place. Most do not follow my advice and a few have learned the hard way after the server crashes and the data cannot be restored that it may have been a good idea to backup daily. Your story is a great lesson to go with a major hosting provider and idealy more than one if you have a few sites.
Hi Doug,
You might want to point your clients to my post and a few others like it to emphasize the point. 🙂
Cheers,
Ros
Thank you for this very generous advice.
Hi Rosalind,
Looks like you are running the Simple URLs plugin from StudioPress and there might be a problem with it.
I had the same problems with it and switched to the Pretty Links Pro Plugin which is better and stable. With the Pro version you can do some awesome things 🙂
Hello Herbert-Jan,
Thank you so much for letting me know.
I actually use php redirects. https://rosalindgardner.com/blog/how-to-cloak-your-affiliate-links-the-easy-way/
Turns out that the .htaccess file had been re-written in the transfer, so the link.php file wasn’t working.
But you are right, Pretty Links Pro has some good features.
https://rosalindgardner.com/go/prettylinks
Thanks again and cheers,
Ros
Wow what a bad experience, yet some good lessons came out of it too.
You certainly gave me some second-thoughts about my lackadaisical attitude about backups.
Glad you’re up and running again, Ros.
Sandy
Another thing I learned the hard way is to register all your sites with a Nameserver – Like NameCheap (and not your hosting company). That way if something does happen and the site can’t be recovered, you can take your backup and load it up to another site – change your DNS registration to the new company – and viola! in Business almost immediately. IF, of course, you have a proper and current backup. . .
Hi Evelyn,
REALLY good point!!!
Thanks,
Ros
Hi Ros,
Interesting post. I have had similar problems when hosting my websites with a small concern. I now use Media Temple (no affiliate relationship here, although I should have, I recommend them to enough people) and I use Elancers to do any geeky stuff that I need and cannot do myself. Have saved a lot of money and more importantly, I am the master of my own destiny. Everything is well backed up and I have the backups. And working through Elance means I can get an expert for each and every job that needs to be done.
The lessons I learnt – NEVER be beholden to anyone where your websites are concerned. You can let people in to help if you need to (like Elancers), and then keep them out when you don’t want them. It is also very easy to move websites from one server to another if you are in complete charge. And “just in case” I have some websites with GoDaddy, some with Bluehost but the bulk are with Media Temple.
I am now off to set up an account on Facebook – that seemed to work really well for you.
all the best
Penny
Wow – I had an unpleasant feeling as soon as I ready your email last week because the same thing happened to me last year. Fortunately, I had all my backups, but one of my clients taking care of her own hosting did not heed my advice and lost important data.
I was friends with my hosting provider and had the exact same experience as you regarding excellent customer service. Then suddenly tickets weren’t being answered and I eventually discovered he had died.
I switched over to HostGator deciding not to go with another “solopreneuer.” I had written a book on online security earlier that year and finally offered it as a WSO in the Warrior Forum. Protecting your sites is incredibly important, but your entire online presence should be protected.
How many people do you know who use their actual birth date, etc. on Facebook and other sites? People really need to take security and backup solutions seriously.
Hi Gail,
You are so right. Security is another important topic that I intend to cover in the near future. Thanks kindly for the reminder.
Cheers,
Ros
Hi Rosalind –
Sorry to hear about Steve and your challenges but very good information. You are probably aware of and working in this but I clicked on the Affiliate Blogger Pro link and got this message:
Not Found
The requested URL /go/affiliatebloggerpro was not found on this server.
Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
Apache/2.0.63 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.0.63 OpenSSL/0.9.7a mod_auth_passthrough/2.1 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 Server at rosalindgardner.com Port 80
Hi Marcia,
Thanks kindly for letting me know. I discovered through another earlier comment that my .htaccess file wasn’t working properly (I guess it had been rewritten in the transfer?) but all is well now.
Cheers,
Ros
I’m so sorry for your loss! I know how close we can become to people we work with, even if we never see them face to face – whether it’s working together online, or working together for the same company in different states, via telephone. You are in my prayers.
Thank you, too, for excellent information and food for thought. I have some of those already in place, but need to be more careful at it.
Again, I appreciate your help and advice. Thank you!
My pleasure, Kaye. Always happy to help. 🙂
I took your lesson here to heart and have opened an account with a second hosting company even though my primary company is Hostgator. You just never know what can happen. Thanks for letting us learn from your mistakes since we all make plenty of our own, new mistakes as well.
Hi Katherine,
Good move! Glad I could help.
Cheers,
Ros
Do you use both plug-ins together?
Also, does the WP-Database-Backup plugin back up everything……your posts, the structure of your site, etc. In other words, is this a complete backup that will restore everything as it was?
I get so confused in regards to backing up my sites.
If your site ever goes down again, what would you do with the emailed back-up that you get daily? What do you physically do with the backup to get your site up and running.
It is a confusing topic to me and I apologize in advance if my questions sound ridiculous.
Hi L.M.
Sure, you can use different plugins to do multiple backups.
As for WP-Database-Backup.. it will always back up the core, but you have to individually select the other elements that you want to back up as well. It provides you with a list and check boxes to select what you want to select. Once you’ve set that up, you don’t have to do it again if you are running the auto-backup.
Cheers,
Ros
Sorry to hear about all your troubles: double troubles betwixt loss of a good friend and provider, as well as his services and everything related. Things happened to me once but on a way smaller scale when my hosting co merged with another. And while they were busy bragging about better services offered, my site was down, and I seemed… to be missing about 1/3 the files that were then on the server. Lesson learned.
Best of luck getting things fixed. I think unfortunately it mat take some time to re-do some things from scratch. Rosalind I can feel your pain ;(
Hi John,
Thanks kindly and I do hope that you managed to find and restore those files that went missing.
Cheers,
Ros