My WordPress Adventures – how I almost lost my blog

Before actually starting to present my experiences with WordPress, I would like to make certain things clear:

I really believe that Word Press is a great blogging platform, with a nice user interface, AND SEO friendly;I have been using Word Press for 2 years now, and I had very little complaints. I really like their features and the numerous plugins they offer.

*If interested in installing Word Press on your site, then have a look at my “How to install Word Press on your blog” tutorial.

Okay, now since we got that out of our way, we can begin with THE WORD PRESS STORY.

It all started just a few days ago. I was busy writing an article for my blog (My successful blog story) and was getting excited about publishing it. I guess, that now with since I put the basics of Blogger Backlinks, my very hidden writer talents are starting to come out. So, I am enjoying more and more to create a new post.

I was ready with it, so I went into my admin panel, ready to publish it. I notice an update available for Word Press, so, I think “well, I should stay up to date. Let’s do it!”. I update to the new version of Word Press (3.4.1), and I continue with my things.

For the record, BloggerBacklinks.Com is doing decently well in Google, for some very high competitive keywords. Needless to say, I see this site as my baby.

Three days after I did my last post, I go to my website, and I notice that my entire website has vanished. I refresh, I check in a new browser, the results were the same: NOT a single file on http://www.bloggerbacklinks.com.

I completely panicked. I had no idea what happened to my site. It vanished in thin air. The best thing I could do, is contact my hosting company, and ask them what the hell happened.

I rush to talk to support, and they were just as confused as I was, the only logical explanation was that because of my Word Press update, the backup was not done properly, and therefore all my files were lost.

This explanation sounds rather vague to me, but that was the best I could get. My hosting company was nice enough to look further more into this issue, and sent a ticket to the security department.

BUT, at the time being, I had no more site. ALL my work was gone. Everything I wrote, every post I made VANISHED. Nothing was left of my site but an empty page.

This also means complete destruction in SE. Because if Google finds ONE tiny error on your site, it will push you down in the SERPs. They don’t like websites with error on them.

Imagine how many I had with a complete empty page!

WHAT to do? With all the pain in my heart, I thought “Well..I will have to start from scratch”. So, reinstall word press again (just to see that I still have faith in this CMS, even if it crashed on me), and start putting my site online..AGAIN.

Find all the posts, check the links…pfft it was a mess. The situation was completely desperate, but I really wanted to have my site up and running again.

During this process, after some time, I get an internal server error. I was astonished.  I couldn’t believe my eyes. For the second time in 2 days time my site was no where to be found!

I really thought someone played a bad joke on me. I mean what were the odds? I rush again to contact support from my hosting company, and they tell me that they have a server maintenance, and that I shouldn’t worry, things will be up and running again.

I was relieved. Even if I would have preferred to continue rearranging Blogger Backlinks, I was happy that my site was still there somewhere.

SO I thought. The next day, when I want to login into my admin panel, I get a database error. So for the 3rd time, my site was having issues. I was really starting to think that black magic exists!

AGAIN, go back to support, and after 2 hours of talking with a very nice and helpful agent, I managed to get my site restored. FULLY and with the initial database before being erased the first time.

I really thought I was experiencing a miracle. I asked what was the cause of my site disappearing, and it is still yet unknown.

BUT, from all of this I have learnt 2 very important things, that I would advise you to follow if you ever find yourself in a situation similar to mine.

READ GOOD before installing anything on your site. It doesn’t matter if the install comes from God, you read it again.BACK UP everything on your site. Keep a copy of your site, especially if it’s an important one. Don’t be a stupid moron, like I was and leave it all to fate.

I got really lucky in this case, and also I can’t thank enough for the help support agent from Host Gator (my hosting company). Without his input, there would be no more bloggerbacklinks.com.

I already did a back up of everything, just in case. I guess this experienced showed me that things can really change over night, and if you’re not careful you can lose one of the most important things you worked so hard for.