Liae Blog

Using Google Cache as a Backup

Life is an Experience. Thought about making it short. Guess it’s hard when you are having a bad time!

I had my domain control panel opened before I left for bathroom. When I returned back, a little kid from next door was still having fun with the mouse.(Oh no!)

I had told him not to touch anything. I swea*! (I promise)

There I saw zero for the listings of my database, for this blog that is. (Oh my Lord!)

I took a deep breath. Little longer when my backup database failed to restore. (ouch! Hear me crying, rrrrr… rrruuu.. ruuuuuuuuu. Those words don’t justify.) Stop it now!

Knowing that it would be an experience of a life time to restore everything manually, I started googling. So far, it’s been a hell of a experience.. It has taught me that backup is a regular job even if you hate it and that you should have multiple bakups; a few burnt in your cds as well.(backup is never enough, now I get it tomorrow i will forget it!)

Imagine your small blog, may be under 50 to 100 posts. Imagine, its database got deleted and your backups don’t work(which will be very unlikely unless you have an old hard disk like mine, lol!), how to restore your database?

• First, call your hosting company and make an excuse. Say that your Son did it or Daughter did it. In my case it was genuine, please believe me. Are you laughing at me? Cry over the phone if you have to. LOL! But may be effective than going insane! Cheap hosting fee was shown to us when we signedup, now is the time for them to rip us apart. Hope they give you a lower fee, but bad *but* Godaddy told me to goaway. Would you believe it? One of my former domain registrant told me about hidden fees and I really didn’t get it that time. May be she meant, customer service and yes godaddy should be customerdaddy but it ain’t. TechDaddy said, “restoration is restoration whether it’s a single database or 50s, a restoration means restoration of hosting also and the fee is $150″ . Yes that is a quote, ask them why it’s so much? Why? Because they are hungry? I have no clue. But I am blue.(Lol!) Yes, the techdaddy proudly claimed that BIG fee without feeling my PAIN. It’s all about money; show them tiny price tag now, and later they will learn; our hearts are made of stones, hello may I help you?, yes we are open 24/7 for your money, now may I have your credit card number please? This is Loldaddy. Lol so much, my belly hurts. Lol again!

  I told the techdaddy, Are you for real, who the hell will buy this service?. I think I hangup before techdaddy could listen. Even if they listen, their boss is not going to listen to my scream. He is probably playing golf and blogging for hosting and me? Crying!

  So, assuming you are like me, (except the crying and insane part), the next step is to create the same database and password so you don’t have to change a thing in your configuration file used by your Content Management System such as wordpress. Also creating a new database willl not cost you anything extra

• Transfer/Ftp installation files to the server, discard this step if installation files are already on the server. Take that $150 as a challenge to save it now!
• Run the installation
• You will feel like crying when you see your empty site what was once full of stuffs. Don’t cry, rather work fast. Tell everyone to leave you alone. Create sections and categories, give name to your beautiful site. Nothing is gone as long as you love it.
• Assuming that google was on your site recently, goto www.google.com, search by typing your site’s name and click on the cache link located below the main link. Believe me. This cache works great. Just copy/paste the stuff and fillup your new database. It’s important to do this as soon as you realize that you don’t have any options left and you have time before google comes to your empty site and starts scrawlling. I have no idea how long the google keeps cache pages live. But if it comes when your site is naked, there might not be much left to find. That is why you don’t want anyone around you. Work fast. Search for all you had. Remember that the links shown on the cached page points to your live site but not to the other cached pages. Don’t click on those links as shown on the cached pages. So search all your site’s content manually. Use notepad to paste the copied stuff. Save that file as you work to grab more contents. You will feel like kissing google. Every time you highlight and click copy, count $2 being saved! Payback time, pals. Say goodbuy to lousy tech guys worth a siht (hope you got that word right)

Well, I hope you never have to use anything. The lesson? Make lots of backups and do it regularly. How often should you do backups? How fast and how much recovery do you want? Answer to this question provides answer to the former question. These days, some hosting companies provide access to recent backups that they did to your database. This is a great feature for our peace of mind and great customer support. Get the most expensive hosting you can afford. So kids can play with the mouse! I might move host. If you are that *extra hosting company which provides access to database backups, please comment this post by providing link to your site so users who are looking for that extra customer support can find you. Thank you so much for taking your time to read this lengthy post. Have a great day today!