As you knew, I discovered on 23-April-2010 that my SWOT blog was down and upon query, it was reported that the server which host my blog caught fire. And the host company are not able to migrate my blog from their server immediately.
The reseller who sold me the hosting package has help to migrate my blog to another host with my blog backup. Unfortunately, my back up files did not have the post content in it. As such, I was not able to restore my blog posts but to write new one. Then I started to make new post and retrieved as many post article from my harddisk ( WINDOW Live Writer ) in order to keep my blog ALIVE but the articles are limited.
Then on Saturday, my friend told me to get the article from google cache which I did I managed to recovered 90% articles from the cache. But I have another set of problem. During the initial set up of the blog, I set the permalink one method, and when I set up the new blog, I set it the new way and started to put up several new post.
Here is the problem with the google cache,. it stored the articles based on the set up then. Now, when I recover the post from google cache and rewrite it into the new blog, the permalink follows the new blog. But then, the google cache still using the old permalink … When google list my article, it is the OLD permalink, and it will give a 404 page when someone click on it.
After 1 full day work on 2-May, I managed to restore the post and overcome the google cache problem with the help of Bluehost technical staffs.
Thank God ! My SWOT Analysis Template is in full function again.
Lessons learn :
1) Have more than one host company for your Internet Business to spread the risk.
2) Host from parent hosting company and not reseller
3) Always backup your blog and the database to your harddisk, server and email
4) Learn Recovery Procedure with WordPress Help resource
5) Get familiar with your own cPanel
6) Keep a copy of your blog post in your harddisk
7) Publish article to article directories so that you retain your knowledge
Do not think this is too much to do, better be prepared than sorry later. My opportunity lost was $4-5 a day from the downtime of this blog. What if you have multiple blog with this hosting company and you did not have an efficient recovery plan???
