With this poster’s release, don’t let me catch any of you with rhinestone crosses spinning on a splash page – then again, if you’ve been reading my blog, you’ll know that you shouldn’t even have a splash page, or as Vincent Flanders aptly put it in a January 2001 ibizInterview:
Wal-Mart doesn’t block the entrance to its stores by making you watch a movie or make you listen to someone who explains the history of the company. That’s what a splash page does. It blocks your visitor from getting to the meat of your site. Also, certain search engines give a higher ranking to the contents of your root page (where the splash page is located) and splash pages rarely have any information. A splash page can hurt your rankings with a search engine.
Oh, and please, no hot-linking w/out providing a link back here (to the article, not just the picture :-).
Jesus defined the elements of volunteerism in Mark 10:42-43 and Matthew 23:8. There is only one Master, the rest of us are servants of whom the least will be the greatest. Problem is, when it comes to highly visible ministries such as the church’s web page, parties involved tend to forget that Christ is the Master, and being the least does not mean being a door mat to bullies and blow-hards.
It’s been almost 12 years since I involved myself in any study of spiritual abuse. No need to since I was helped out the door of a church suffering said ailment in the form of pastoral worship. Here’s the short story:
A pastor of 39 years gets the heave-ho by the deacons, and is soon replaced with a new, charismatic personality guy pastor arrives
I teach a Sunday school class where I generically warn the 10th graders to test everything, including a pastoral message
I get a note on New Year’s Eve telling me I’m no longer a teacher, a week later followed-up by a ‘lay staff’ member, also a Secret Service agent by day, who explains to me that I’m not qualified as I insist my students bring their Bibles to Bible study (he, NOT noting that I gave free Bibles at my own expense to those who didn’t own one &/or were still equipped with a ‘kids’ version).
I’m told I need to change my attitude. Others are similarly given the boot for equally bogus reasons.
Later it comes out the pastor has a past in the form of an SEC investigation and a personal bankruptcy.
Pastor gets up in pulpit and divides church with “those who are with me come forward and show your support” … pastor of singles ministry takes note/names of those who don’t go forward.
Five years later, the Washington Post reports said pastor resigns, something about a very, very large sum of money missing due to a tuition scandal/scheme involved with the church’s Christian school.
Going back in hopes to see if thing can be healed, I’m excoriated along with others as being the cause for the pastor’s demise.
So when I read a comment regarding volunteerism being an issue of authority – understand that while I agree one must have a servant’s heart – on the other hand one must be careful of church and charity organizations that exhibit some of the following qualities based on Jeff Van Vonderen’s book, ‘Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse:’
Out-loud shaming
basically belittling born out of “something is wrong with you” if you don’t step into line with your attitude.
Focus on Performance
how important you are is based upon earning favor w/those in charge, rather than by administering God’s Grace
Manipulation
relationships and behaviors are manipulated by very powerful unspoken rules that facilitate shaming messages
Idolatry
focus on performance is facilitated by impossible-to-please judges who distort the image of God to get their goals
Preoccupation with Fault and Blame
responsibility and accountability are not the issues here: Fault and blame are the issues. The shame-based system wants a confession in order to know whom to shame.
Obscured Reality
if you’re thinking critical about those in authority – even if it is based on truth, then something is wrong with you, you need to change your attitude bub; this starts by ignoring and/or obscuring the actual truth.
Unbalanced Interrelatedness
rules take the place of people that feeds upon one’s fears and need for structure in the form of placing the burden of all problems on your shoulders, making you feel selfish and guilty for having needs, not submitting entirely to pastoral authority and/or noting that anything is wrong.
Note – I’m not asserting that said commenter implied any of the above, but rather their comment jogged my mind into putting the topic of volunteerism and spiritual abuse together. A topic which I could write and speak about for hours, but for the sake of brevity – there are three simple solutions to overcoming spiritual abuse masquerading as volunteerism:
Scripture
personal boundaries
technical specifications
One need only read about Christ’s interaction with the authority figures of His time to see how ancient the problem of Spiritual Abuse is – and how a single Master, servant-hearted Body focused on loving one another by Grace will get around said problems;
I might start with Matthew 23, where Christ defines some serious boundaries so the volunteering of your time and technical talents isn’t turned into an opportunity to shame and guilt you into adding animated gifs, auto-loading audio, and a huge image worshiping the pastors proboscis on the front page.
I’d then do some reading on how to structure a software design description (SDD); the IEEE 1016-1998 has always been my favorite. Having such a formalized process – and an established timeline – will further keep glory seekers and self-appointed ‘experts’ in check, while protecting you from enslavement to never-ending feature creep.
I’d also then consider reading my post entitled “Mr. Zeldman meet Mike Boyink, one of ‘The New Samaritans’” – and realizing then the need to structure your relationship with your church as you would with any web project and client; even if it means running it like a business. Trust me, the alternative only provides the evil-one with opportunity to ruin your walk, and divide your church.
There’s more on the topic, much more on this topic that can be found at Watchman.org – starting here:
Again, let me make it clear that I do not interpret last night’s comment was from the spiritual abuse camp, I don’t interpret it that way. It just merely made me think about the topic of where a good servant attitude ends and where spiritual abuse begins; and how perhaps some good old fashioned technical specifications might help avoid the whole mess.
Yes, please feel free to discuss this topic freely here – disagreement in love is always welcome here!
Earlier this morning, I got a panicky email from a friend whose hosting provider made a boo-boo, launching a CRON job to perform an automated backup every minute instead of once a day. OOPS! While sorta funny, the situation was potentially sorta serious. Here’s the advice I suggested to ‘bash’ the run-away job(s) dead as a doornail:
Step 1 – stop the cron daemon
Linux has the ability to start and stop background services on the fly. Known as daemons in *nix parlance, the cron service runs once a minute. So step number one is to stop the cron daemon:
$ /etc/init.d/crond stop
or
$ /sbin/service crond stop
Which version you’ll employ depends on which version of Linux you’re running, but for clarity, I’ll continue on with the ‘/etc/’ flavor for the rest of this post.
You can check to see the status of the daemon with the ‘status’ command:
$ /etc/init.d/crond status
Step 2 – Remove the errant crontab entry
First understand that merely removing the errant crontab entry will not kill any run-away jobs currently in process. It will however prevent future jobs run running again. Some might suggest crontab -r … but that’s the sort of nuclear option I’d rather not resort to unless all else fails.
We’ve discussed modifying contab before, which for most of you is a task that has been somewhat ‘de-geeked’ by means of various command consoles such as cPanel and Plesk.
However, when dealing with run-away process – it might not hurt to know how to modify crontab from via the shell/command line as HTTP services (e.g. your web-based admin screens) might be unavailable.
Step 3 – Identify the run-away process
So far, we’ve been working in the realm of ‘relatively safe.‘ But killing a process, that’s one sure way to shoot one’s foot clean off – so proceed with caution.
If this is beginning to become all too much for you, it is at this point you can reboot the server and let it do the rest of the dirty work.
For the brave, caution means enumerating all the active/running processes with as much information possible. On a SUN, that would be ps -ef, on Linux ps aux.
Of course these commands can potentially list dozens, if not hundreds of processes, so the trick is to limit the results, piping them through grep to filter only those jobs you want/need to see.
The results should include the process id (PID) of the offending process – and if you’re good with your grep – any related (parent) processes. With that PID, you then use the kill command to wack the runaway process good’n’dead. Here’s an example: bash-2.05a$ ps aux | grep “mywebsiteâ€
mywebsite 11666 0.0 0.2 2444 1344 pts/2 S 23:43 0:00 -bash
mywebsite 12451 0.0 0.1 1700 604 pts/2 R 23:50 20:00 mybackup
mywebsite 13074 0.0 0.1 2660 760 pts/2 R 23:50 0:00 ps -aux
mywebsite 13075 0.0 0.1 1700 604 pts/2 R 23:50 0:00 grep mywebsite
bash-2.05a$ kill 12451
BTW, kill -9 can be used to forgo the graceful exit and just kill the process
now (e.g. do not stop at go, do not collect $200, just drop dead).
4 – Restart the crontab daemon
$ /etc/init.d/crond restart
Disclaimer
While the above steps worked fine for said friend (no, I’m not ‘said friend’), please note that with any such online advice, such advice, your command-line syntax, results and mileage may vary. Meaning, I disclaim any responsibility of you entirely submarine your system.
This weekend the Robert E. Peary High School Class of 1977 will hold its 30th year reunion. Whatever comes of the events, one notable failure will be the lack of a strong and effective online presence similar to those suffered by many church and charity websites. Here’s why:
Some Context
See if this story doesn’t sound familiar to some of you who have offered your time and talents to church and/or charity web sites …
.. back in early March of this year, I emailed the reunion committee and offered the following resources for free:
free web hosting for the site – all bandwidth included
set up a domain name if I/we/you/the committee chooses to buy one
provide limited but sufficient email & listserv services to the domain
set up an open source community/content-manglement application – such as WordPress
set it up with adsense with any click through going to an account established of/for/by … “the committee”
support the committee’s need for document collaboration through Google Apps
track website usage using Google Analytics
hand the keys to the kingdom to whichever committee member wants to run the site, after providing them free online training.
Here’s the response I got back:
Thank-you for getting back to me. Let me tell you what we hope to accomplish and you can let me know if you can be of assistance. Please understand in my mind I think what we want is fairly easy and straightforward but then again I have 3 dedicated web staff members who would tell you that I am not always thinking straight. We would like to be able to handle the ticket/advertisement/contribution sales for the reunion on the web. We want to do this for several reasons:
Ease to classmates of handling purchases on-line and being able to use a credit card for payment
Cash going directly to the bank rather than sitting on someone’s kitchen counter
Having a data source for sales so that we do not have to reenter contact information for badges, advertisements and memory book messages
We are planning on opening a PayPal account to handle the secured payment processing. With the PayPal service it is not necessary to have a shopping cart on the website. In addition, I do not think that we need a dedicated domain as this is a brief project and I have asked [name witheld] if we can put a direct link on the [alumni] site. I envision having a form for classmates to fill out that includes:
contact information
guest information
number of tickets to be purchased
cash contributions
advertising to be purchased (full page, 1/2 page, 1/4 page and business card)
total purchases
description of donated items
actual ad (pdf format?)
memory book statement
photos
As several people on the committee would be working with the data for badges, memory book, etc., we would need multiple access to the data. While a standard text box could be used for the memory book statement, it would not be a problem to have the ad & photos submitted separately through e-mail and outside of the webpage.Please let me know if this is something you could help us with or if you have any other questions.
The Problem
In other words “… forget about what you have to offer in terms of a free online community with collaboration, tracking and ad revenue tools – we have an an overly-ambitious e-commerce and badging system in mind, so please limit your thinking to our’s or else no thank you…”
Such responses are not uncommon with churches and charities as well.
I’ve both experienced and heard via email from a number of you instances where talents offered were talents ignored because it was ‘outside the box’ limiting vision the person in charge.
Well in some cases, I think it’s an issue of control.
Examples
For example, I’ve offered to help with (and not take over) the website of the church I currently attend. The pastor has eagerly handed this offer off to a member of the staff. The staff member has politely ignored my offer – instead opting to wander in the wilderness of PHP failures for six months until they finally subscribed the Community Builder service. Which not a bad choice – but one that could be better leveraged with more effective presentation than what is currently implemented.
Similarly, when I first moved to the area, I had considered joining another church here in town until I asked about being involved with their web presence. There I was told flat-out that the web committee was set – and would have to wait a year or three before considering my aid (even after explicitly assuring them that I would help, not take-over). As I check on the site today, I see almost 2 years later that not much has changed.
Finally – that ambitious Robert E. Peary High School Class of 1977 reunion site mentioned in the above communications? I’ll link it up here and let you judge for yourself.
My Point
So is this post merely kvetching?! Ah, probably a little – but not because I’m bitter – heck, them saying no only means more spare time and less work for me!
Rather my post is a wake-up call is to pastors, church staff and other individuals charged with the stewardship of their church and/or charity’s web presence.
When an individual offers you a loaf of bread – don’t return the offer with a rock (yes, I know that’s an inversion of the metaphor).
Or put another way, when experienced web developer, a paid software as a service product manager and published usability author is offering their time, resources and talent – cool it with the worries about control and instead consider what it might cost your organization to hire out such expertise and/or services.
I know I’m not alone here, as some of you have emailed me similar accounts of frustration.
If so, leave a comment here. It’s time church staff and committee chairs quit ‘beefin‘ about time, tithes and talents while squandering that which is already being offered.
According to George Orwell, a scrupulous blogger, in every sentence they write, should ask if their words and images attain their site’s conversion goals. If not, then perhaps there are some instances of Spurgeon-esque church-speak and/or kitschy imagery and cliches getting in your reader’s way.
For those of use who graduated high school before 1984, we remember with both eager anticipation and fearful foresight the George Orwell classic of the said year. A book that not one of my friends, nor I, could put down once started in part due to Orwell’s crisp, concise and to-the-point power-writing on such an important and always relevant topic. A style of writing nicely summed up by an article on WritingClasses.com entitled ‘George Orwell: 12 Writing Tips.’
The above article, quoting from essay ‘Politics and the English Language,’ reformats Orwell’s points in a way that should speak to bloggers and church webmasters alike:
A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus:
What am I trying to say?
What words will express it?
What image or idiom will make it clearer?
Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?
And he will probably ask himself two more:
Could I put it more shortly?
Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?
But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in.
Similarly, for those of you providing compelling content for your church, charity and/or lay ministry, ask yourselves this:
What is my organization trying to say?
What are the shortest number of words we can use to express this message?
Are there any images, either in metaphor or media that will speak 1000 words?
Is this picture I’m trying to paint relevant and fresh enough to meet our site’s conversion goals?
Not sure? No problem, in the same document Orwell also leaves us with some rules we can employ to provide more compelling content on our blogs, websites and emails:
Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
Never use a long word where a short one will do.
If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
Never use the passive where you can use the active.
Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
Break any of these rules sooner than say anything barbarous.
If this is still all unclear to you, then allow me to redirect your attention to the following action items, in order:
consider the conversion goals of your website – what are you trying to get the reader to do when done reading your stuff?
knock-off the church speak – speaking in TBN-ish platitudes may preach to the choir, but may also be painting an irrelevant and confusing pictures to potential congregants.
Web design sins are generally the product of inexperience. And as experienced sinners, we’d like to help you avoid these deadly mistakes – some that we’ve made, and others that we see every day.
Pride
Here’s a Web design secret – not everyone on the Web will be viewing your Web pages with your cool computer system. The Web is composed of a diverse group of people, all of whom have different combinations of computer, operating system, platform and Web browser. The sin of pride in Web design is failing to consider how your design choices will affect your audience.
FireFox, Safari and Internet Explorer (MSIE) display Web pages differently (depending on the features that you have added to your page). It is important that you check your Web pages on FireFox, Safari and MSIE for inconsistencies.
Web pages can be interpreted differently by different versions of the same browser. Internet Explorer 7.0 has some features that won’t work at all in MSIE 5.0. So it is good practice to check your Web pages in as many versions and browsers as possible.
Web pages can look different on different computer platforms. For example, Macs show fonts two point sizes smaller than PCs with the same point size specified.
Also keep in mind that not everyone viewing your pages has the same physical advantages. Visually impaired individuals may be browsing your site with a text to speech reader. (A text to speech reader will read only the text on your page.) If you use mainly graphics on a page, the text to speech reader has no text to read. Make sure that you represent all important images with an alternative text attribute. (You can generally configure alternative text in the image properties.) Alternative text makes your Web site more accessible not only to the visually impaired, but also to people with slow connections or older video cards.
Envy
There is a lot to envy on the Web – sites that have brand new interactive components, flashy visual technologies, incredible internal structure – envy is understandable. But using the new thing without understanding it is a very bad idea. It takes time and experience – expertise – to make new technologies effective and older technologies innovative.
Finding information about new technologies on the Web is relatively easy. And step-by-step instructions for the most innovative use of older technologies are readily available. But there is a great difference between knowing what to do with a technology and knowing how to do it.
Understand before you implement. Read about the new thing before you try to use it – and ask a lot of questions. Is there a standard? Will it work in all browsers? If not (and it’s probably not) which ones will it work in? Are those the browsers that hit UNT most often? Is there a way to convey the information differently for older browsers? And please, don’t forget the most important question: will it add value to my site?
Find sites that use the innovative technique badly, and avoid their mistakes. Find sites that use the new technology well, and build on their success.
Gluttony
Graphic overindulgence on the Web is very common. The relative ease of use combined with the frequent lack of a design background in novice Web workers creates some interesting forms of self-expression. Graphic design is indeed important to the Web. The Web as we know didn’t “take off” in popularity until images were added. But there are a few rules to keep in mind when you are creating your page:
Images add download time to a page. Use graphics wisely. This includes learning how to make images that download very quickly. You can check out builder.com for hints on tweaking your images for speed.
Animated .gifs are the plastic pink flamingos of the Web world — decorations of questionable value. An animated .gif does add motion to a page — but is a rotating, flaming email icon really enhancing a page when the visitor has to sit through a longer download ? How impressed is the reader seeing your whirling, pulsating “New” icon for the fifteenth time?
Background and text colors can be changed on a page, but should not be changed without a good reason. The most legible combinations of text and background are high contrast – dark text on a light background or light text on a dark background. Red text on a green background is bad – the low contrast between the colors will make that page very difficult to read. Black text on a white background is optimum.
Although the default link colors can be customized, remember that a good portion of the Web audience is new. Novice Web users understand that the blue underlined word is a link. Be very careful that your color changes don’t confuse your Web site’s navigation. Link colors must contrast strongly with the background color but should NEVER be the same color as the regular body text.
Finally, a brief word about background images. The purpose of your site is to present information to your audience in an effective manner. Make sure that your background image doesn’t make your text difficult to read. As Creating Killer Web Sites(by David Seigel) says, “gift wrapping paper makes bad stationary”.
Lust
Every day brings a new toy or technique to the Web. And everyone wants to be on the cutting edge of design — to show the world just how tech savvy they are. However, you must avoid the temptation of adding these new technologies for the sake of the technology alone. Techno-lust has been known to lead good Web designers astray.
For example, there is no need to use a scrolling Java applet to present a list of subjects on your site. People with browsers that don’t support Java can’t see the list. People with browsers that do support Java won’t necessarily see it, either. Java and other technologies such as Flash, DHTML, AJAX, and RealAudio have limitations and do not work consistently for all browsers across the Web.
These technologies were created to address specific needs — to serve some specific purpose. A trendy new technology’s existence doesn’t make it appropriate for the task at hand. Always strive for a solution that will benefit the widest possible audience.
Your content should drive the technology that you use — not the other way around.
Anger
Would you like to drive your readers to the sin of anger? Then be sure to:
Link to pages that don’t exist — those animated under construction .gifs are a fine substitute for the missing information! (Not Really! Avoid making your readers angry, and debut new pages or areas of your Web site when – not before – they exist. Draw attention to your new material, not the lack of it.)
Ignore screen resolution issues! If you’ve got a 19″ monitor running 1024 x 768, then design for that, because everyone else has one, too! (If you are unfamiliar with these terms, you can learn all about the the perils of screen resolution at Andy’s Art Attack, a particularly good source of image information.)
Don’t provide any email contact information on your Web site. What could your readers possibly have to say to you? (You’ll avoid compliments and complaints by not providing contact information. You’ll also miss out on opportunities to help current and prospective students find the information they need. Read UNT’s Web Publishing Guidelines for more information.)
Greed
You’ll see marvelous images on Web sites — wonderful sound and animations — and brilliant content. You’ll want it all for your site. We understand this greedy impulse. But copyright is as real on the Web as it is in print. And while it is easy to take graphics, sound, text and more from Web sites, it isn’t right or legal without the permission of the copyright holder.
There are hundreds of Web sites that allow the use of their images in exchange for a link back to their site. If you use their images, follow through on your part of the deal, and link back to them. If you find an image that you can’t live without, and are unsure of who owns the copyright for that image, send the site owner email. Ask permission to use the image, and keep the email that gives you permission. Realize that permission for a cartoon, a science fiction character or your favorite song is very hard to come by, and generally costs money.
If you really like what someone else has said or shown on their site, provide a link to that site! That gives the original artist credit, and keeps you out of the copyright business. If someone challenges your use of content that you did not create, apologize and remove the challenged content. (Read about why on Law and the Web at builder.com.)
Sloth
It’s been said that Web site creation and procreation have something in common — that the act of creation is much more exciting than the care and feeding that inevitably follows. And while a Web site is less demanding than a child, failure to maintain a Web site is the deadliest of Web design sins – sloth.
UNT’s Web Publishing Guidelines clearly state that you should only put on the Web what you can maintain. Inaccurate and out of date information reflect badly on the university as well as the individual responsible for the Web site.
A few other hints:
Run a spell check on your Web site. If spell check is not available, invest in a dictionary. Incorrect spelling is particularly inappropriate on a university Web site.
Check your links on a regular basis. Web sites move or reorganize frequently, and they’re not likely to notify you of the change.
Indicate the date each page was updated last. This freshness dating lets your readers know how often the page is updated while encouraging you to keep your Web site current.
At some point, some savvy steward in a church raises the question “What happens if our all-knowing, über church web design geek leaves? We should have them teach us how it works.” At which point even more hilarity ensues as the following process begins innocently enough in the form of an ‘educational’ ad-hoc Internet committee meeting:
Committee chair: brings the ‘how the church website design works meeting’ to order
Pastor/staff member: sheepishly asks the webmaster how the blessed thing works
Church webmaster: disdainfully glares at the council members … wondering why no one else has read the WordPress Codex
Committee meeting: sound of crickets chirping can heard in background
Adjacent hallway: little kids gather hoping to snarf down a left-over donut when the meeting adjourns
Committee chair: passes a note to pastor to ask a specific question on a specific aspect of the website
Pastor/staff member: sheepishly asks the webmaster how a specific element of the website design works
Church webmaster: disdainfully glares at the council members … visibly upset how badly everyone missed the point of everything
Committee members: the webmaster berates them, in between insults throwing off valuable nuggets of technical information
Adjacent hallway: little kids waiting outside the door for left-over donuts begin to cry
Committee chair: collect the valuable nuggets, knowing they are the only reliable technical information they’ll ever receive
Pastor/staff member: sheepishly ducks out into the hallway claiming to want to calm down the crying kids
Church webmaster: disdainfully glares at the council members … moodily awaiting next question …
Committee members: try like dickens to weave together the informational nuggets dispensed in between insults into something enlightening and technically accurate
Adjacent hallway: enraged parents of crying children begin to gather with torches and pitchforks
Goto step 6 until church webmaster is summarily ex-communicated
Here’s my point:
To my beloved church website design gurus out there, please spare yourself the shame of said scenario and either install a and/or sign-up with wiki service. Then when you have a spare moment, document some of the things you do.
The wording may not be perfect but it’s enough of a start that would allow others less … how shall we say … technically adept but more gifted in word-smithing to collaborate said documents into perfection.
As I’ve noted before, WikiSpaces is free (and easy), so you have no excuse – other than wanting to spread His love and your knowledge through the ministry of disdainful glares.
What does the PG&E induced craigslist outage have to do with your church or charity website? How about a reminder of the tired but true adage that reads ‘Those who fail to plan, plan to fail.’ Specifically using mysqldump, crontab and perhaps ftp or rsync to insure you’re data isn’t dead in the water when your host goes down.
One of the big advantages of running a web services company out of the San Francisco area is that you’re located where the majority of action is – at least in the U.S.
One of the big disadvantages of running a web services company out of the San Francisco area is that when the Bay area takes a power hit – you’re down with the best of them.
This power-packed paragraph from the Boston Herald exemplifies the scope of the situation:
AT&T Park, home of the Giants, was also affected hours before a scheduled night game. Six Apart Inc., a blog-hosting service, said its sites began failing shortly before 2 p.m., and the company sent an e-mail to customers blaming the city’s “power issues.†Several other Internet sites with San Francisco offices had problems, including Craigslist, Technorati, Yelp, Red Envelope and CNet. It was unclear whether the problems were related to the outage.
Now while I suspect the ‘big guys’ have contingency plans to quickly relocate had this been a long-term failure, I also speculate that your church and/or charity’s emergency plans may not be so robust as to handle something such as a hosting provider that goes belly-up due to either natural and/or financial disasters.
That said, there are some no-cost, low-bandwidth solutions are already available to those of you opting to manage your site’s content on a LAMP platform using an application such as WordPress or Drupal.
Here’s all you need to cook-up your own recipe for success:
So if nothing else, with the above you could set up a nightly job that backs up and then gzips your database all in one fell swoop:
$ mysqldump -uMYSQLUSERNAME -h localhost -pMYSQLPASSWD wp_MYDB | gzip -9 > wp_MYDB-db.sql.gz
This approach is of course not without its downside, specifically:
you could be potentially overwriting a good backup with a corrupted data backup
you still have your backup on a server that could go down
you have no real report as to the validity of the backup
Instead, it’s probably advisable to create a script and/or perhaps write a PERL program to enhance this process to:
first grandfather the last good archive backup
then archive the last good backup
then add a date stamp to the file
then make a copy of a successful backup to another location
finally, email you and/or log the results
But who as time to write a script you ask? Well, fear not, one of the reasons I’ve filed this article under ‘resource filled’ is because I found a wonderful little service entitled: the FTP backup script generator.
You simply enter the parameters, it generates a script that you then copy and paste onto your system – then crontab to run on a nightly basis.
And if that doesn’t float your boat, here are a few other articles on the topic of how to use crontab, MySql and FTP or rSync to keep your data safe and sound now matter how badly the power fluctuates about your backup-savvy server.
NixCraft – How to backup MySQL databases, web server files to a FTP server automatically
How to have automatic backups of your mySQL database – ThemeBot
How To Forge: Create Incremental Snapshot-style Backups With rSync And SSH
I know we’re all busy, and I said, this approach is a mere pittance in light of true disaster recovery. That said, it is up to make sure you have at least taken the above precautions … and from there add more points and detail … for as it is written (with apologies to the inspirational text of Romans 10):
How can they restore the data without knowing how? And how can they know how without having practiced? And how can they practice without someone teaching them? And how can someone teach without documentation? As it is written, “How beautiful are the webmasters who have planned ahead!â€
AT&T Park, home of the Giants, was also affected hours before a scheduled night game. Six Apart Inc., a blog-hosting service, said its sites began failing shortly before 2 p.m., and the company sent an e-mail to customers blaming the city’s “power issues.†Several other Internet sites with San Francisco offices had problems, including Craigslist, Technorati, Yelp, Red Envelope and CNet. It was unclear whether the problems were related to the outage.