Romancing the Blog | Romance Authors and Readers Who Blog

Actually, I wanted to blog today about gifts for readers and writers, because Black Friday and the holidays are so close (not to mention my own birthday tomorrow *lol*). But instead of talking about gifts and asking you for suggestions, I want to take the time to tackle another topic that has been on my mind lately…

I love the online romance community. I live in Germany, but my friends, colleagues, clients, favorite authors, and business associates are only a few clicks away. Many take this fast and easy way of connecting for granted, but what happens when you can’t reach someone you used to chat/email with on a more or less regular basis? When you need information, but the person who knows what’s going on can’t be contacted? It’s very worrisome—and could turn into a disaster of epic dimensions for authors if it’s their webmaster/mistress who’s gone MIA.

I’d prefer to report otherwise, but exactly this case has happened way too often this year—and to say I’m fed up with it is an understatement. Unfortunately, when the trusted webmaster vanished, so did the ability to update and access the website. In cases like this, what follows are feelings of helplessness, disappointment, and anger, which are often self-directed by the victim for being so naïve for not knowing more about their own website. Because, while finding a new web diva may be manageable, starting from scratch with one’s website isn’t. It’s frustrating having to spend so much time and money on something you shouldn’t have to worry about it.

So here I am, asking you to do the following:

• Make sure that the domain name and the hosting account are in your name (with a valid email in the contact information).
• Always have all necessary login information for those accounts at the ready.
• Ask your web person to send you a copy of all edited files after an update. This way you always own a full set of up-to-date website files.
• WordPress blogs and sites allow automatic and scheduled back-up of all posts & pages (you’ll need to back up your uploaded images and templates separately) with the right plugin, such as WP-DB-Backup.
• Back up regularly!

In case it’s already too late, here’s an emergency kit of things you can do to ‘rescue’ your site:

Case 1: You have access to your domain account and know which company you host with. But you can’t access the hosting account because you don’t have the login information and it isn’t in your name.

Contact the host’s customer service and explain your situation. Often they may offer a solution like the following: Open a new hosting account. After that, you’ll need to add some information to the whois information (www.who.is) of the domain registration to prove ownership (that’s done by accessing the domain account). Once that is done, the host can then—after informing the current account holder the domain is hosted under—move the domain to the new account and allow you to host the site.
Here it may be helpful if you host with a small hosting company who knows their customers personally (less hassle).

Case 2: You have access to your domain account, but don’t know where you host.
Try going to www.who.is and enter your domain name. On the next page, click on the ‘DNS Records’ button and look into the SOA record box. There’s an email listed that will let you contact the host. Again, explain the situation you’re in.

Case 3: You have access to your domain account, but the host won’t or can’t offer you help.

Get a back-up of your site using a free program like GNU Wget (Download) that retrieves content from web servers. (Unfortunately, there are limits to such a program. For example images embedded into the design using css as well as some php scripts won’t get backed up—only images added by code within the content and the output of such scripts. However, at least the images can be separately downloaded as the css code tells you where to find them stored so you can access and download them through a browser). This way you don’t have to start from scratch. Then, go find a new host, ‘connect’ your domain with it, upload the back-up, and fix broken links/images.

Case 4: Like case 3 with the exception that you also don’t have access to your domain.

On top of the back-up-action and the finding of a new host, you will have to get a new domain.

I hope nothing like this ever happens to you, and that your site is safe and sound. If you’ve got some tips for website/file back-ups, please share them in the comments. And on second, and lighter thought, if you have a suggestion for reader/writer gifts, add them, too.

Related posts:

1. Taming the internet promotion monster