Ahhhhh! I Detroyed My Site!!

[jkgourmet]

I sympathize. And appreciate your OP about this - it forced me into taking care of installing the plugin to do automatic daily backups.

I hope the hosting company is one with good customer service and resolves your problems quickly and completely.

[StephenT]

I sympathize. And appreciate your OP about this - it forced me into taking care of installing the plugin to do automatic daily backups.

I hope the hosting company is one with good customer service and resolves your problems quickly and completely.

They are working at it. at least I didn't destroy it completely! Also, I wanted to revamp it anyway so, if I have to rebuild, oh well!

[nar321]

If you aren't having enough fun yet, try deleting a database or two thinking that they where all for the same site and then wondering I got "Error establishing a database" on two sites. I had been archiving my Databases in Thunderbird's Archives, so opened it up to get one and poof! they where all gone. Needless to say I now have a new place to store Databases, make a daily Backup and will probably burn them to a cd as I have no desire to relive that experience. As usual HostGator Support people where Fantastic, I can not say enough good things about them, Kudos to them
NOTE: you can store a backup for your site inside wordpress on the server(see the backup area of your cpanel) as well as schedule a daily or weekly backup. WordPress has a plug-in for backing up Databases, you can also export all content as a XML file. Test periodically to see if the backups are still there and intact.

[pmaior]

Stephen:

I feel your pain. I once wiped out my WHOLE DOMAIN!. I still don't know how, but I know I was using the file manager in cpanel. That method is dangerous if you don't know what you are doing, and even if you do. I mostly use an FTP client for most transfers, because it limits your access. File Manager will let you delete anything.

Fortunately my hosting provider did daily backups, as most do, and I was able to have my entire domain restored in a matter of minutes.

Hopefully you learned your lesson on making backups of everything.

The important thing to know is that there are two things you need to backup.
Your Wordpress folder( more specifically wp-content) and your databases.

Most hosting providers offer a tool to do a complete backup of your entire domain and then you can download it as a zip file. This is good but usually overkill if you have just one or two sites. Backing up the wp-content folder will save all site specific data. Everything else can be fixed by a re-install of Wordpress, then overwrite the wp-content folder. I think there are some config file as well in the root that contain the database connection settings, but that can be re-edited if necessary.

Then there is the Mysql database. That is totally separate from the Wordpress installation. Like Jeanette mentioned there is a Wordpress plugin that handles it. I do it manually through phpmyadmin in cpanel, the plugin is obviously easier.

Learning is fun Huh ?

Don't feel bad, I "know what I'm doing" and have screwed up plenty. Fortunately I can fix almost anything I break. And I learn from my mistakes.

Good luck, Stay positive.

Pablo

[AlexNewell]

Hey Steven - looks like you're having SO much fun!!

As you've seen in this thread we have all done stuff like this...

Once I moved a domain to another host completely forgetting there was a blog on the domain. I only remembered when I saw a big fat nothing...where the blog should be.

What to do?

All readers of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy know it is vital to follow the advice on the back (written in LARGE FRIENDLY LETTERS no less) - "DON'T PANIC!"

So I moved the domain back to where it started and BINGO - there's ma blawg!!

Phew!!!

It's all part of the learning curve buddy

BTW it's best to build a few posts up before you go link building - you don't need many links - and then you pop the Adsense code in. You are not going to be earning much until you have built the traffic up a bit anyhow.

As you noticed you get quicker at this stuff with practice.

You might find it useful to create your own checklist. If you are going down the adsense route you will probably be building a LOT of adsense blogs

:-)

All The Best

[Clay Franklin]

When I was taking my PHP SQL data base classs, they said if you mess up your database it is easier to start over. So I avoid messing around with the database.
I like the wordpress plug in that emails you a back up.
I lost one of my favorite posts and I can not find it in backups or printed copies anywhere. I need to rewrite it one of these days. It was a story about the phone is everywhere.
For my computer, I back it up off site and to a meda smart server. I am so paranoid of losing my data. Off site in case of fire, theft or earthquake.

[StephenT]

Thanks everybody for your commiseration! The first time I did this, I destroyed the database as well, big mistake! This time I just tried to move to the root directory and somehow locked myself out of the wordpress admin page. The tech support people fixed it and I am up and running again!

I did back up my files, but for some reason (my lack of knowledge) I couldn't restore. I really wasn't too concerned. I figured tech could fix it so I had a glass of Scottish barley water and waited.

I do want to revisit the back up issue, but will do that in another thread.