Well, it happened again, I had a major PC systems failure (Windows). My valuable business data (all of it)  was corrupt, my PC could not boot - I couldn't even download my email! But was I worried? No! Which is probably an unexpected answer when all your client records are destroyed, right? Well, there's a hook to this story, some time ago I touched on the subject of disaster recovery with an earlier post about saving your data when disaster strikes. In that post we explored the issue of software and hardware solutions. In my case I invested in an affordable network storage unit. It's a proactive solution because all my data is regularly duplicated (automatically - I don't have to do anything) to the network accessible storage unit. After reinstalling a robust operating system (this was my last remaining Windows based PC, now every PC is Linux - Including this one), all I had to do was copy the data back off the storage unit. It even had all my email, email settings, folders, calender, etc. (I was using Thunderbird as the email client as I found I could do much more with it than with other email clients - ...

I received a twitter question from @marika2motivate that asked (you can follow me on twitter @BloggerSavvy): "Is wordpress better? and if it is can you explain why? Trying to feel my way around the blogging world!" To answer, I think the best approach is to look at the pros and cons of self hosted (stand alone) versus site hosted (community) blogs. Personally I am biased towards a self hosted Wordpress platform as it allows for greater control and customization. Again, having said this, the real issue is how you are going to drive your content, do you require full control or are you going to hand off your blog's control to a third party? As most blogging platforms offer more or less similar tools; for those interested in the nitty gritty (comparing platforms) WeblogMatrix has a nice tool to help you compare actual platforms. Another nice link that Google returned was "Blog software comparison chart". In my (humble) opinion self hosted blogs are the best (and most professional) way to go. However, without further delay, here's my take on the pros and cons... Self Hosted Blogs The good: Using open source software (such as Wordpress) results in an affordable installation (it's free). There's no payment for the ...

For years, I've always believed that keeping your data safe is critical. Without a safety net, there's no fast method to recreate years of blog or web site content additions and updates. I'm sure you'd agree with me right? Right! I've rarely had any issues until recently. Do you want to avoid some of these costly issues for your blog? As some of you are aware, I recently experienced two disasters that effected my blog and how I worked. The first disaster resulted in the initial loss of my blog (and several hours of work it took to write the initial content). The second resulted in the near-loss of data on my computer and a loss of my Internet connection. Both issues lost me time and cost me money. Issue #1 - Software Related The web server was configured to automatically create file and database backups every 24 hours. I even received the daily email messages, indicating the backups were created; and faithfully downloaded the new backups each day. Shortly after a I launched this blog, a scripting issue on the server caused all databases to be dropped (deleted). Normally it would be a simple fix to use the existing backups to restore ...