What do we need to be prepared for? We need to be prepared for disaster!
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"Problems can and do arise when you least expect them..." |
No, I am not talking about the end of civilization, as we know it. I am talking about the relatively simple little things that can go wrong. The things that might have no discernable impact on the world but can totally ruin our day, our week and our business.
Here is a look at some potentially serious problems that can arise and how we can prepare for them.
A friend of mine is a graphic designer and does a lot of work in the adult industry. He often has a lot of different projects going at the same time and even when a job is completed, many of his clients come back for copies of work that he has made for them in the past.
A couple of weeks ago his hard drive crashed. One moment it was rumbling along quite ok and the next there was a clunk and a black screen and everything was gone. Of course, if he had been a regular computer user, it would have been relatively simple to buy a new hard drive, re-install the operating system and internet connection.
Unfortunately, his entire business was sitting on that hard drive. All his completed work, his partially completed work, his contacts, everything that he needed to remain in business was there.
There are specialists who can recover vast amounts of data from failed hard drives but it can take time and can be expensive. Even worse is that he has to send his hard drive off to another state because there is no one locally who can do recovery work. He could have reduced his problems by being a little more prepared.
These days, hard drives are getting bigger and bigger. They are holding more and more information so when they fail, the impact is proportionally worse. To guard against that sort of catastrophe is quite simple and becoming cheaper every month.
The answer is to back up your hard drive frequently. It isn't necessary to back up every single file you have on your computer but imperative that you back up those that you simply cannot live without.
I back up my files once a week, on the same day every week. I burn them onto a CD, label it and store it away in a safe place. That has got to be one of the simplest and inexpensive ways to guard against disaster.
If hard drives can fail on a personal computer then they can also fail on your server. What would you do if your host contacted you in the next couple of minutes and told you that there had been a disk failure and they had lost all your files and they wanted you to upload all your sites again? Would you be able to do it?
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Recently on a newbie board, I saw a post from someone who said that once they uploaded a file to their server, they deleted it from their PC to save space. That is a very bad move.
Even just keeping your files on your PC may not be enough. When problems happen to your server it is natural for you to go into panic mode and unless you are prepared, you may miss uploading important files.
Again, the solution is simple. Set up a directory on your hard drive and in that directory keep an exact mirror of everything that you have uploaded to your server. That way when a problem occurs and you need to be able to upload your files quickly everything is there in one place and you don't have to waste your time searching for files scattered all over your hard drive.
Licences are provided by content providers and certify your right to use the content that you have obtained with that licence. What would happen if someone questioned your authority to use some content that you had on your site or even questioned the legalities of some of the content you were using? Would you be able to put your hand on the licence to rebuff those claims?
If you cannot produce a licence when challenged you do run the risk of having your host cut your sites off. If you use teen content, you need to protect yourself against any suggestion that you are using illegal content so it is vitally important that you keep your records straight.
Keep a hard copy of every licence and make sure that you have some system in place that identifies the licence with the corresponding content. That may sound a bit odd but after a couple of years you will have hundreds of sets of content and linking content with their licences will not be so easy.
Problems can and do arise when you least expect them and usually at the worst possible times. Whether you survive those problems or not will depend largely on whether or not you are prepared to tackle them.