Since so much effort is put into writing and managing your blog, losing it can be even worse than loosing your whole hard drive.

So basically the other day, my blog died. I spent an hour trying to restore it but my Wordpress database was corrupted and I hadn’t backed it up since two months ago. So from then till now I have been trying to desperately repair my database and thanks to a few free tools and people I have succeeded.

However this has been a huge pain and wasted a lot of my time which could be spent doing many other things I have to do, so this is basically what I learnt from my blog FAIL.

1. Backup your database every night

Your database is the brain of your Wordpress blog, it contains all the posts, comments, tags, categories, modifications, settings etc. Without this you would have no blog so this is a must do. I use a plugin called WP-DB Backup, which emails me a copy of my database every night. So if a problem ever happens It won’t be to much of a problem to restore it.

2. Have the latest version of Wordpress running

This post mainly applies to Wordpress blogs, but can be used universally. Newer versions of Wordpress constantly fix up security holes and bugs in your blogging platform. Having the most up to date version of your blogging platform running means that you will have the best protection offered at that moment. Instead of struggling to upload the newest version each time it comes out there is a plugin called Instant Upgrade for Wordpress which will easily take the files from Wordpress and upload them to your blog with very little work done by you.

3. It’s not really the end of the world

It may feel like it but its not. All it is just a pain. If this happens to you and you havent followed steps listed above then take a deep breath and get to work. If you have a RSS feeds then your actual posts arent really lost as all the content is still in your feed.

So save your time and energy, a few moments spent now will save you a lot of time in the future.

Getting the best out of your modem is what every geek strives for. You want that top notch download and upload speed. Even if you don’t need it, you want it and its worth a lot of effort.

So over the past week I have been playing with my Linksys WAG54G modem and been having a lot of fun. However I have been unlucky increasing Wi-Fi speed to my laptop around 10 metres away. I tried DD-WRT to try ‘hack’ my modem to run to its maximum potential, however it wasn’t compatible with my particular version.

It took me over a week to really point out the obvious, my modem was positioned extremely badly, it was nestled under computers, printers, wires and plants. So being the geek I am, I decided to run a few tests on whether the change in placement of the modem would increase my speed.

So from these results we can see that placing a modem just half a metre higher can double your speed. Try this trick before you try any other of those ‘tin foil’ or ‘mega-booster’ ones. I’m certainly looking forward to improved speeds.