Back up blogging what to do if your computer breaks

Posted by Will Blears on November 11, 2008 in Blogging

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What to do if your computer breaks?

The third and last part of Back up Blogging looks at what you can do if your computer breaks an annoyance which could happen to anyone at any time in their blogging career. I’ve had it happen to me once or twice however I was lucky enough to have a back up computer which I was selling at the time.

Your computer can breakfor hundreds of reasons, some which you can pick up straight away such as the PSU dying but others are much harder to uncover and could take weeks to be repaired. The plan you need to have just in case this happens to you is what you can do in this situation so that your online businesses are not affected.

Firstly lets compile a list of things you won’t be able to do if your computer breaks

Access the Internet I will go in to more detail for reasons you will find out later on.
Access E-mails or E-mail accounts
Access Admin Panels
Access Forums, Message Boards or any other various social networking, social media websites
Access your server or hosting/cPanel
Upload/Edit web files
Access to information such as saved passwords, usernames for all of the above.

The last one is a very important point to make because although you, your girlfriend, family member or friend may have a laptop or another computer you can use will they have your log in details or will you be able to remember them.

This is something I came across when my computer broke although I had access to my old computer this had all my old previous passwords and usernames it took days to figure out some of my passwords and in some cases I never ended up logging on. Now you maybe thinking well why didn’t you just do password recovery you dummy?! This is because password recovery usually requires access to an E-mail account which again requires a login username and password which I had also inconveniently forgotten so I had no way to recover my passwords.

The lesson I learn here was to use either a password which you would not forgot or to have your login details for each of your accounts written down or in your mobile phone, just so you have access to them apart from on the computer. Now this may not sound safe so however you store these details is up to you just make sure you have access to your details without having to use your computer (which would be broken at this point).

The second very important point on this list is having access to your website files now if you have forgotten your log in details to your hosting account or you can’t remember your FTP server information which is quite common for myself. Then you won’t be able to retrieve your webfiles even if you have computer access. Instead it is a good idea to make a hard copy of your webfiles external to your computer. Like I was suggesting in the first part of the back up blogging series where I urged people to back up their blogs there are more than just the internal reasons related to your blog. It is always good to have your web files stored somewhere else in the event that your computer breaks. Again like I suggested in the first part of the series a good way of backing up your files is via tape or CD this means you have an external copy of your web files which you can access through any computer.

So now we have talked about the problems you may incur from having no computer access if your computer breaks lets now talk about strategies you can take if this happens. Really we are not just talking about if your computer breaks, although the article is focused on this in particular. We are also talking about if your computer/laptop is stolen or you are on holiday or at your girlfriends, mothers, friends or anyone elses house where you have no access to your computer and you urgently need to access the internet.

There are some strategies you can when your computer breaks, the suggestions are quite similiar to those of the second chapter where we looked at what to do if you have no Internet access

Ask a friend or family member if you can use their computer.
Go down to your nearest Internet Cafe and use their computer.
Use your laptop if you have one or spare computer.

The difference between your computer breaking and having no Internet access like I talked about in the second article is that all those web files, software and everything else you use in your day to day blogging life are not at your disposal. To play it safe I would back up your whole computer incase your hardrive dies or is destroyed. This guarantees that you will have access to your computer’s files even in the event that your computer breaks and if your hardrive is faulty.

The main points to take away from this article are:

Make sure you have access to your login information with out having to access your computer. On a peice of paper, second computer or laptop, mobile phone, your hand anywhere.
Make backups of all your computers files including all of your web files and blogging files, articles, images, videos.

I hope you enjoyed this article, it makes a change from the usual articles. However we will be back on track tomorrow with the sixth part of 11 things to consider before you start blogging

If you think I have missed any other really useful strategies for ensuring your blog is not affected if your computer breaks then please post them in the comment section or E-mail me them.