His post is an educational post written with permission from the client who experienced it. We agreed for the client name and website to not be mentioned. I encourage each of you to put your devices down and read this and then think about your blog and what would you do if it happened to you. Over the holiday weekend we were contacted by a client that was having some issues with images. We asked when did this issues start to get the backstory of everything going on so we could attempt to assist as best we could. The site owner informed us they had hired a third party developer/site optimizer to do work on their site and they were making monthly payments on the service with this developer.
I won’t use the developers name or company, the goal here is to educate, not harm others. As we dug into the issue we noticed several files had been modified, plugins installed, etc among other things. In communicating with the client the time stamps on the files made sense to be the hired developers work. Keep in mind, this developer had been working with this client for sometime. Without boring you with the technical details it became clear that the best way to restore this site to working order was to use a backup. Upon asking the client where’s the backup the developer made, we find one wasn’t made.
Bottom line, this is sloppy work by any developer. Any developer should take a backup before beginning any work for the sake of both parties. If the work is long term then multiple backups should be taken. If the developer doesn’t take them and demonstrate an ability to restore them then right from the start should be a red flag.
Bottom line, this is sloppy work by any developer. Any developer should take a backup before beginning any work for the sake of both parties. If the work is long term then multiple backups should be taken. If the developer doesn’t take them and demonstrate an ability to restore them then right from the start should be a red flag.
To make a long story short, the problems were more than a backup restore as the problems had been building during the term the hired developer was working. What did we do? In all reality, it’s the developers job to fix the mistakes, but it was clear that wasn’t going to happen. It wasn’t our responsibility as a host to fix it, we didn’t do the work. In defense of the client, they had read the reviews on social media and the internet about this developer and they appear to be positive, so the client had no indication they might have a negative experience, so it’s not their fault either.
We care more about our clients than ANY host out there. Any other host would have stopped when no backup was available to restore, told the client best of luck and carried on. Yes, that includes the big box hosts too. Instead of doing that to the client, we dug in, got the team engaged on a holiday weekend and worked over 24 hours to solve the problem. As of today except for some cosmetic issues the client is happy and their site is running well.
The lesson here is, you’ve got to be smart, you’ve got to ask questions, talk to us if you aren’t sure or something doesn’t feel right. Ask us to take that backup even in addition to one a developer should be taking. This client was seconds away from loosing many years of work.
Could you handle that? Is your blog a part of your income? When hiring someone to work on your blog in most cases all you have is the online reputation or a few suggestions from friends or social media. Keep yourself safe when making these decisions, either make your own backup, or better yet ask us to, just to be safe. We can restore tat backup quickly. Would you rather restore it and loose a few posts at most or take the risk and loose it all?
Bloggers carry the title of content creator and to be fair for most that’s all they want. We hear you, we understand you. You don’t even have to know how to protect your blog, but asking us how to protect your blog is important.
We take offsite backups, some of you pay for extra backups, we have those here for you. When you hire that developer you need to have a plan, if you aren’t sure of the plan, you need to be asking us. Asking us requires no technical knowledge, it’s being smart, and protecting yourself. Accidents happen,