Postscript 12 Jul 2010: After writing this post I was engaged to manage the upgrade of 6 wordpress blogs. During that assignment we discovered a problem with the Bei Fen backup plugin. Basically it works the first time you do a backup but it fails on subsequent backups. You won’t know that it has failed unless you look for the relevant zipped file for downloading. If you delete the plugin and reinstall it, it works again but only the first time. Bummer!

If there’s one thing I know about data backups it’s this: most individuals or small business owners aren’t even doing one.

This article is specifically for the internet publisher who is using a third party provider to host their Wordpress website.

It is a mistake to think you can rely on your website hosting service to backup your site…unless you are specifically paying for a managed backup service. ¹ Even then, my cardinal rule is never trust anyone else to backup my data.

I can tell you plenty of horror stories about failed backups. I’ve seen the most zealously cautious organization discover that their backup procedure was in some way “flawed” only to discover the problem later on when there is some disaster and an urgent need for a restore. It isn’t enough to do a backup, you also have to test the reliability of it.

When it comes to backing up a Wordpress site it is a two stage process. It needs to include the database files and the directory files. There are a variety of ways to do this and you can do it all manually but this is tediously time consuming, prone to error and if you are technically challenged it can be a bit daunting. I have not yet found the perfect user-friendly method but there is a free Wordpress plugin that makes it relatively easy to backup your site.

The Ben Fei plugin will backup both the Wordpress database files and the directory files in a couple of clicks. It will do a complete backup stashing all the data into one zip file that you can then download to your PC for safe keeping.

The thing I don’t like about the plugin is that you have to manually cleanup leftover backup files. If you don’t do that, you’ll end up chewing up disk space in your hosting account. But it provides an easy interface to do this cleanup. It also doesn’t automatically prompt you to download the zipped backup data. ² You have to use an FTP client to do this.³ If you are not familiar with the use of an FTP client, you can also log into your hosting service cpanel to download the file that way.

You can find this plugin at this link: download Ben Fei plugin and the documentation is at Ben Fei Info.

There are other backup plugins available for Wordpress but many are foiled by their geekiness or they only do half the job.⁴ The Automatic Wordpress Backup Plugin sounds good at first glance. Automatically backups your whole Wordpress site to the Amazon S3 service.⁵ But it only works on a Linux host and only if curl is installed and shell_exec is enabled and the upload folder has the right permissions. Blah blah blah.⁶ This might all be okay for the more technical types to handle but the average user might find all of this too daunting. Still…if you can get it setup and if it is reliable…it could be a nice set and forget solution. ⁷

Remember, you can’t be totally sure about the reliability of a backup until you’ve actually tested a restore. I’ll make that the subject of a future post.

Aside: for my young friend who has the YLOD problem on his PS3…
check this out YLOD Fix

Photo courtesy of Nico Van Der Merwe

My friend The Plumber had a huge project for which he wanted to bid. It was a big project…bigger than any job he had managed before (he’s a young guy). He was confident he could do the job and he asked me how to use Excel to put together a plan.

Before I knew it we were at my computer putting together a project plan and schedule in Microsoft Project.

He had never heard of it. And I knew nothing about plumbing projects. But in about 2 hours we had a brilliant detailed milestone plan with costs. More than that, the process of putting together the plan helped him realize just what to quote for the job.

In the end he got the job and finished the project ahead of schedule and well within budget. He told me later that he made the most profit he has ever made and he believes he got the job because he was able to present a detailed and thoughtful timeline.

It also helped to manage all the resources because he could easily publish a calendar of activity for each and every supplier and subcontractor.

I’ve been polling tradespeople (electricians, carpenters, other plumbers, maintenance contractors) and none of these people use Microsoft Project or any sort of project planning tools!

Why is that?

I wonder if this chap Electrical Panel Service Upgrades uses it?

People are forever asking me: What is the best virus software? Best wireless router? Best accounting software? Best computer. Best this. Best that.

There is no best anything. Best is relative to your needs, your budget, your nous, you technical skills and in the end it all boils down to some sort of experience. Mine. Yours. Your friend’s. The collective wisdom of a crowd of strangers.

You can pay a little or a lot or zero money for software that does what it is supposed to do. The question is whether the software is going to do it well. But more importantly no matter how much money you pay you can’t get away from spending some time. It takes time to research and if you get something that is crappy or hard to use or doesn’t really do the job you want it to do you’ll spend a lot of time stuffing around with it.

So this is my current experience. Maybe it will save you some time and some money.

Over the course of many years…let’s say since 2003 when I had my first devasting experience with a virus…I’ve used all of the following virus and firewall and anti-malware software.

• Norton
• McAfee
• Bit Defender
• PC Tools
• AVG

When I say I’ve used I mean I’ve paid a subscription, installed and used for at least one subscription period or longer on at least three PC’s more. I’ve also helped many small business and friends and family install and use these products.

For years and before virus software came bundled with firewall software I used ZoneAlarm’s free firewall.

I ditched Norton, McAfee, Bit Defender and PC Tools because they all became too bloated. They take up too much computer resource to update or to run. And when my husband threatens to throw his notebook computer out the window every time it appears to come to a screaming halt (caused by virus software updates) then I know it is time to ditch.

I used AVG early in it’s historical life. I was always suspicious of it and in the end it let viruses slip through that at the time it simply shouldn’t have. Once burned twice shy so I never tried the paid version.

Last year I paid (by way of Trial Pay and this is not a recommendation) for a one-year subscription to Zone Alarm’s bundled version of virus and internet security software. After a good year’s run with it, I recently renewed my subscription, upgrading to their eXtreme Security product. But whoa! Every time I wanted to download something using Firefox it spit the dummy, produced an error message about being unstable, shut down my Firefox (which really pissed me off since I usually had at least 8 windows open). After a week (hoping that an update would fix the problem) I reported the problem to Zone Alarm (via online chat). I seemed to be the only person in the world who had this problem.

I asked for my money back (and they promptly refunded). Then after swearing that this is all a racket anyway (really isn’t someone out there getting paid to write viruses?) I also swore never again to pay good money for malware protection and I started my search for a money-free good reliable product.

Security Software That I Am Currently Using

Here’s what I am using (so far)…

Microsoft’s Totally Free Security Essentials

After dreadful experiences with Microsoft’s Defender firewall, I would normally stay away from any virus protection Microsoft offered. But I decided to try Security Essentials after my husband put a rave review under my nose. And I really like it. It is quiet and unobtrusive, efficient and best of all it works very very well on low configured XP machines. I’ve only been using it for two months but so far so good.

PC Tools Threatfire

I am also using PC Tools Threatfire (the free version) as an added measure because I rarely do a complete system scan and I like the concept of the behaviour-based real-time prevention (compared to other virus protection that relies on prior knowledge of virus patterns and necessitates regular updates). On Vista (with 3GB of ram) this extra protection doesn’t seem to impact on resources. I would be wary doubling up like this on an XP machine.

Ad-Aware

In addition to virus software, one needs occasionally to scan for spyware culprits. The alternative Spyware Doctor seems to do a good job but it isn’t free and it is resource hungry. I definitely would not let it run all the time.

Ad-aware was the only malware software that found a dormant key-logger on my PC. None of the virus scanners paid or free discovered it. I don’t let Ad-aware run all the time because there is a noticeable impact on system resources. I fire it up for a complete system scan about once a month.

The Final Measure

I have two final measures of good security (virus, firewall, malware detection) software. It is whether or not my 72-year old Mother can easily use it on her 6 year-old Toshiba laptop (XP 500MB of memory) without degradation in performance and whether my 70-year old Aunt using it on her 4 year-old Dell desktop can go at least 6 months without getting a virus.

I will report back.

Suddenly for no good reason my Outlook 2003 (running on Vista) keeps restarting itself.

When a problem like this suddenly starts happening you just know it is probably caused by some other software that you’ve recently installed or a Microsoft update.

If you have installed some new software, uninstall it if you can and see if that doesn’t fix it.

In my case: I’m not 100% sure what was the cause. I haven’t installed any new software lately so I did another Microsoft update (there were 4 critical patches) and the problem went away as quickly as it appeared.

I’m still running Outlook 2003. I can’t bear to take the time to learn Microsoft 2007 and Microsoft 2010 is around the corner.

Do you ever wonder about all those advertisements for Government Grants?

If I have received one spam on the subject of Grants I’ve received hundreds. I mistakenly signed up for what I thought was an informative newsletter about US Government grants. Wrong. It was a marketing ploy not a news worthy letter.

Fortunately I did not fork over any dough. To quote a cliche…If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

But have you ever tried searching Google for information about governement grants? The first three or four pages are just more of the same scammy junk. So much for Google’s concept of relevance.

I accidentally came across these two article while research something else. Government Grants for starting businesses (or paying off your debts) is a complete furphy.

Grants and Loans Breath Thru the Myths

The Truth About Government Grants

All those CD’s and books that people are trying to sell you about getting Government Grants are scams.

Save your money.