Yesterday, I experienced what every blogger dreads — the white screen of death.
I went into update my theme and bye bye blog. Being technologically impaired I panicked. I’m not going to lie, I hyperventilated. With shaky hands, I contacted my theme provider, Ashley at NoseGraze and Bluehost. Both responded promptly and helpfully assured me that everything would be okay. It turned out my PHP files were outdated and can laugh it off as no big deal. I breathed a sigh of relief.
At Bluehost, the customer service person was so patient and helpful, taking me through step by step to fix the problem. He also reset my username, because silly me affiliated it too closely to my blog name. It had concerned me I may be easier to hack and he nicely stayed on the line while I logged back in.
It goes without saying that Ashley has marvelous customer service and was willing to look through my mess and clean up the pieces to ensure an easy update next time. She really goes above and beyond.
Through this I learned the importance of backing up not only your data base but your theme as well. Fortunately, I have set up automatic database backups with ITheme security but my theme I took for granted. After breathing into a bag I did a few tweaks and was back up and running. Thus a word to the wise, you can never back up your site enough. You never know when disaster will strike.
For peace of mind I use VaultPress a paid service. It cost me 55.00 but they backup daily and it includes everything from theme to comments. For the best security I use Wordfence Prem for 39.00 a year. They will even test your login strength for you.
Those are great suggestions Kim. The person I talked to from Bluehost mentioned that there was a lot of code from my security plugin and subtly suggested I look into changing it. I will have to do a little research on Wordfence and VaultPress, thanks for the recommendations.
Oh- oh that would definitely freak me out. Glad to hear Ashley and Bluehost got you backup and running with a minimum of fuss. I’ll have to look into those services that Kimba references too… can never be too secure I guess. Have a good weekend. 🙂
Yep, I won’t deny my mini freak out, but happily everything worked out. I think the services Kim mentioned were for WordPress but I would be shocked if Google didn’t offer some sort of extra blog security. Although, whether you’re on blogger or wordpress you can never be too careful.
Yikes! So glad it worked out. I didn’t know I needed to do extra security, I thought Ashley did that – I know she has told me about some login attempts, and changed the site from http to https. Do I need more security? What for exactly?
I know I have not been backing up and I also need to figure out what to use. VaultPress does not seem to be installed so I would have to ask for it, which I always hate to do. What are you currently using?
First, this wasn’t a security issue — no hackers yay! my PHP files weren’t updated and therefore couldn’t handle the theme update. I use ITheme Secruity which was recommended by Ashley via a “move to WordPress/Plugins” posts. It has kept evil people at bay but does give itself permission to overwrite files which I’m not crazy about so may look into Wordfence. ITheme Security backs up my database automaticly every Friday. Although, Vaultpress looks very appealing as it backs up your database and your theme. I’m really going to have to look into that as I like that that is the focus rather than an off shoot/after thought.
Okay, I may have to bite the bullet and pay for VaultPress. It seems like the easiest and most streamlined solution. I know I should be doing backups.
I’ve actually been using WPBruiser (free version) for spam prevention and it has some security functions. It seems to have reduced the spam comments and email subscriptions, so I hope I can stick with that.
I feel the same way and think it would be worth the price for piece of mind.