When working with computers it is vitally important to keep your data safe. Hard drives on computers, (and for that matter flash drives, DVD’s and any digital storage device), do not last forever. Anyone who has had a hard drive crash will know the sinking feeling that comes with this problem. Data can also be lost through simple human error, who hasn’t clicked Delete on a folder and then almost immediately realised it contained needed data? Data backups are also excellent reference points.
When considering data backups the oft quoted dictum is the 3:2:1 Rule. Basically this works as follows.
- Always keep 3 copies of any important file (a primary and two backups)
- Keep the files on 2 different media types (such as hard drive and optical media)
- One copy should be stored offsite (or at least offline).
The same can be said for any online data such as a blog. Despite the best efforts of blog owners and the “fail safe” prompts needed to confirm actions, Posts, Pages and other content can be lost inadvertently.
At other times you might like to provide students with a copy of their blog in a file that can be uploaded to another blogging portal or published as a PDF or even a book.
To help you backup your Global teacher blog you might like to use the following notes, (even if you don’t want to publish it anywhere else). If nothing else, creating a backup is good insurance, so why not give it a run?
If you are using a self hosted blog then you might also like to consider downloading the “Word Press Database Backup” plugin and follow the directions as posted by Darren Rouse. Another alternative is to use the WP Time Machine plugin which “Creates an archive of all your WordPress Data & Files and then stores them on Dropbox, Amazon’s S3, or your FTP host.” as per HubPages.
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