Hello and thanks for visiting my blog.

A quick catch up for my regular readers:

As you can see I’m back; the operation went well and the op’ site seems to be healing as it should be, fingers crossed it will continue to do so and I can crack on with my work load.

My mum is still suffering the affects of her burst aneurysm but seems to be out of danger.

Onto the blog post:

How valuable is your work and the time it takes?

While I was laid up I had to use my laptop to work and then I was very limited to what I could and couldn’t do. As I was laid on my side it was impossible to type so all I could do was copy and paste.

I opened up Turbo Lister and started to add a few sales pages to my listings. At times adding them to my website so that the images were in place.

I had just uploaded one to my eBook website when a few minutes later Outlook Express asked me for the password to one of my email accounts: Which was very strange as they should be automated. I entered the password and a box popped up asking for it again.

I stopped what I was doing and thought I’d look into the issue. So the first thing I did was check my eBook website (http://e-books2u.org.uk). I couldn’t access the site, so I checked all of sub-domains on that host and they all gave me the same result, nothing!!

3 websites were down
4 email addresses were down
Countless sales pages were down
My Digital Dispatch was down
All of my eBay listings had missing images

My first port of call was obviously my hosting company’s website, guess what….. Yeah you guessed it, that was also gone. Panic started to set in so I emailed the hosting company (using a different email address, on a different web hosting service), and guess what………..It was returned as undeliverable, with a permanent fault.

Now I was really panicking. I should also point out that I had been with this hosting company for a few years and never had any problems, they automatically backed my site up every 24 hours and were just an email away if I ever needed to get in touch with them. However over the last couple of years they hadn’t sent me any invoices. I did email them and point this out, (I hate bills building up), and was told “I’m running behind, enjoy the free hosting”. Yippee, I thought (at the time).

Now that I had lost all of my eBook websites, eBooks, Thank You pages, email addresses, My Digital Delivery and everything else, the list goes on and on. I was thinking all sorts of nightmare scenarios.

The company hadn’t billed me, could they have been affected by the recession?
Wouldn’t they have emailed me if they were closing down?
How can I contact them for my back up file, (so as to move to another host)?

Panic was firmly setting in so I went onto an eBook forum (that I’m a member of and where I had come across the hosting company in the first place). I tried to send them a Private Message, and it stayed in my out-box.

I asked my daughter to check the same sites and email accounts on my PC, and got the same results, none.

So I posted a request for help on the main forum, asking if anybody else was having the same trouble.

I laid in bed that night worrying that if I couldn’t get hold of the hosting company how could I get hold of my back up file? And if I couldn’t get that………

……nearly all the work I had put in over the last few years would have to be re-done. I keep a copy of all websites so they would be easy enough to upload again, but I would have to replace My DD and over 300 listings on it, 4 email accounts (to set up PDQ), ebooks, sales pages, images, recommendations the list went on and on, over and over all night long.

In the morning I asked my daughter to check again on the PC; it was all still down!!

I went back to the eBook forum; the private message was still in my out-box so with I big sigh I looked at the request for help that I had posted, knowing that I was stuffed…..but I had a reply from a fellow member saying that my site was still live as he had checked it for me.

I replied saying that I still couldn’t access it my end and couldn’t understand why, if it was still live my email accounts were failing as well. To which I was told that it was must something technical and was  advised to turn my complete system off, including modem, from the mains power supply.

10 minutes later I turned it all back on and it was all live again, the fault had been something in my modem, which was reset by being off for 10 minutes.

Phew what a relief, but what a lesson learnt. Never rely solely on someone else for the security of my work and back up regardless of what you’re told. Always keep a copy of your complete websites.

The Extra Expenses:

I asked my wife to buy an external hard drive, £75.00

I made back ups of My DD and the complete website, FREE

I asked D9 Hosting Services to transfer the complete website over to my hosting account with them, FREE

The feeling of relief, Priceless

I should point out that the hosting company had done nothing wrong and that the fault was something in my modem. However, I realised through this that I only had one existing point of contact for the hosting company as they had changed their email address and no longer check their messages on the forum, so getting hold of them was an issue.

So for peace of mind I transferred the site to D9 Hosting, where I have numerous contact points and hope to live happily ever after.

My advice to you is take a little time and back up your ALL of your work and websites. It may take half a day to complete, but how long would it take to replace it all?

Until next time, take care

PS If you would like to Triple Your Blog Traffic simply enter your details below for
INSTANT ACCESS to the Brand New Video, MP3 file and eBook



Related Posts:

Filed under: General

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!