Last week I dug through the backlog from being away for an extended stretch (I think this cruise was the longest vacation I’ve had since I started working).

I expedited the post processing of the shots from our last excursion at Guernsey to get them up on the site.

At this point I’ve got some post-processing to do on last April’s Disney trip shots for Lorna’s scrap-booking over the next few weeks so the next block of shots may be a little bit delayed (I can drop some nice shots from the Disney parks in Orlando in the interim).

I had a serious scare last Friday when the files part of this blog disappeared (the database was still in place so the most important bits weren’t directly at risk). I’ve been putting off the work of arranging a proper backup system for the blogs here as I knew it would take a bit of work to get right and had other things that took precedence (isn’t that always the way). I was able to recover the missing files using a GoDaddy hosting tool that allowed me to roll back to the previous day and effectively un-delete the files. Over the weekend I did discover the fate of the missing folder(s)…it looks like I bumped a mouse button while using my GUI based FTP tool and inadvertently moved the folder under an adjacent folder. In any case, I’ve now got BackWPup installed on both of my active sites with database and full site backups running on a schedule. It looks like a pretty decent little tool…it doesn’t automate recovery, but they have a walk through of the manual process that looks relatively easy. Given this is a personal blog, buying a tool doesn’t make much sense (this one is free). I’ll be loading XAMPP on my ubuntu linux test box sometime soon to give the recovery process a run-through.

I promised Jen a post on the setup and tools involved in my site here. I’ve put together the first part of a several part series so far. This one provides the history that got me to this spot. A little tangled and indirect. The next piece I’ll put together, I’ll try to detail what this pair of sites looks like behind the scenes and what tools I’ve found to be useful. I’m a software engineer and I suspect that my perspective may be a bit off the beaten track so take with a grain or two of salt…