The chart below has been prepared for my talk on disaster planning for small businesses, to the FINE Business Network July 15, 2010, 9am-11am at the Westport Country Playhouse, Westport CT.
You can find out more general information about disaster planning at FEMA’s Continuity Of Operations Planning pages.
(Click on the chart to see it in a larger, more readable format.)
On New Year’s eve I mistakenly uninstalled WordPress from this blog thinking I was working on WHIT.tv, the What’s Happening In… Telecasts, another site I own and manage. I wanted to change the WHIT.tv WordPress installation from the single user version to WordPress MU (multi-user) since WHIT.tv will host a series of Internet video shows, with multiple contributors. The first three shows will be What’s Happening in Fashion, What’s Happening in Gardening, and What’s Happening in Rolling Sculpture. I am working on launching the website and the shows.
How did this happen?
I pay GoDaddy to host both sites. They have great service, good prices and reliable hosting. They also have one of the most confused and confusing websites in existence. I went to their website, logged in and clicked on hosting under the My Products section of the home page.
This is what I saw: 
I clicked on the second Manage Account link, the one for WHIT.tv. I was then taken to the Hosting Control Center v2.10.0 Home page, where I clicked on the Your Applications button. I navigated to My Applications – WordPress (installed), and clicked on the link to uninstall the application, thinking I was on WHIT.tv and only WHIT.tv, since the initial link I clicked on was to manage the WHIT.tv account. I was mistaken. I was on both sites and I had clicked on the wrong link, unknowingly uninstalling WordPress from RHFtech.com and not WHIT.tv.
I called GoDaddy and told them I had just deleted several years worth of work and that I needed them to restore the site. They said they could do that for $150. I gave them my credit card number and authorized them to restore my site, figuring I would save several hours worth of headaches in trying to restore my site myself from my backups.
GoDaddy tried and failed. After a week’s worth of attempts I asked for a refund, which is under review at GoDaddy. [Update: GoDaddy refunded my money.]
This morning I searched for how to restore from a backup. Yes, I have many backups as I am pretty good about that. First, I had to install the phpMyAdmin plugin into the WordPress installation. That took a minute. I then followed the instructions at WordPress.org Restoring Your Database from Backup. It took me a couple of minutes to follow those instructions.
And now this blog is back to the way it was before the New Year’s eve massacre. I am thankful that I backup regularly. I am thankful that my Google search found Restoring Your Database from Backup. I wonder, why couldn’t GoDaddy do this?