You would think, wouldn’t you, that a computer science professional who’s been in the business for decades would know the value of backups? I do, and I have most of the content of my blog backed up on my home computer, so I didn’t lose nearly as much as I could have when the host server went belly up. The configuration and administrative data is another matter. We were relying on the company hosting us to do their part in backing up the host server, and when they admitted, after nearly a week of providing non-answers, that the machine was completely fried and they had no backups, we had to rebuild the website from scratch.
My husband, bless his heart, is doing most of it. System administration is the aspect of dealing with computers I like the least. The fact that the server died right before my stepdaughter’s wedding didn’t help. We’ve had a busy few weeks.
I’m not sure what lessons we can take away from this fiasco. Always do our own backups of critical administrative data, even if it means duplicated work, is probably one. Keeping detailed records of the steps needed to set things up is probably another. (And don’t look to us for help or advice with backup and recovery issues. There are plenty of people out there who are better at it than we are.)
It will take some time yet to get things back the way they were (I do, after all, have a day job), but we are and will continue making progress.
Thank you for your patience.