Today we’re going to jump the gun and do a little Spring cleaning in the form of the New Year’s Resolution. Right now, before you read any further, tell each family member that you love them; then, back up all your sites, blogs, and documents. Sort out a process for backing-up or cross-posting everything you do. Sort out a proper schedule for backing up both databases and associated photos and graphic files. Be sure to make sure you’re on top of your domain registration and the hosting fees. Make sure all of the contact info, email addresses, and phone numbers are current both at the hosting company and at your domain name registrar. Check to make sure you’ve updated all of your credit card info and maybe try paying annually. OK, done. And here’s why . . .
My blog, Chris Abraham, is gone. It was a perfect storm. I had it on a dedicated server and had it sorted out to back up every day. But I cheated. I had my blog sorted out to back itself up onto another hard disk on the same box. Mirror this, RAID that. The long and the short of it is that everything went POOF.
It had worked perfectly for a decade. Aside from some challenges with uptime, the site has always been there and worked. Rock hard, until it wasn’t.
OK, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. Done.
Why am I OK about this? Well, part of being a blogger for 15-years is that you’ve written quite a lot of rubbish. Quite a lot of garbage. And now it’s mostly gone. All of my good work since January 18, 2011, is on this Biznology blog and over on Socialmedia.biz and Huffington Post.
Phew.
And that’s important: all the good stuff persists and all the bad stuff is gone. Memories, maybe, but also lots and lots of crap. It’s sort of freeing.
What happened?
From 1993, when I entered the web, until maybe 2010, I was highly technical. Command line, Linux, vi, PHP, Perl, Python, Apache, PostgreSQL — loved it! Starting in 2003, I became a marketing guy; in late 2006, I became a president and COO. My mad ninja tech skills began to take a back seat to managing, writing, proposals, invoicing, billing, sales, schmoozing, hustling, and of course Tweeting, Facebooking, and training, coaching, and doing webinars.
I sort of put my tech on autopilot. I lost my constant vigilance. I became lazy and, instead of off-tasking the tech to someone who sings and dances tech the way I did a decade ago, I said to myself, “I know how to do this! I can still rock Bourne, C, and Korn shell!” Well, maybe, but I wasn’t passionate about it anymore.
Here’s the thing: if you’re in communications, PR, or marketing, you may be less technical than I am. I had a catastrophic loss of 15-years of shameless and fearless blogging — poof! While I am very excited to reinvent myself and move past my legacy, my type-casting, not everyone feels this way (and, who knows, maybe I am still in double-secret, super-deep, denial).
So, please so something towards making sure this doesn’t happen to you, ever, and then report on what you did in the comment below — and if you can’t leave a comment, please pop me a note on your social network of choice, Facebook, Twitter, or even Google+.
What am I going to do? Well, I am giving Squarespace a go. Cool stuff, easy, simple, and pretty. Use me, my woe, and my suffering as a warning, as a shot across the bow. Good luck, soldier.
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