In an attempt to post this lovely graphic (which, by the way, links to a cause everyone should check out), I somehow managed to delete three entire widgets full of text from the sidebar.
How did this happen? I’ve got no bleedin’ clue. Only one of them was open at the time, but after I hit “save” all three vanished. My WordPress installation is (of course!) up to date; all my plug-ins were also current. Were things perhaps not playing nicely together? If that was the case, it was the first I saw of it.
During hours — yes, hours! — of restoring lost sidebar content (thank goodness for Google’s cache) I berated myself for being so incompetent. How simple would it have been to save all that information in a document on my hard drive, or send it to myself via email. How much work it would have saved. How stupid was I for not doing it sooner.
I’m not stupid enough to make the same mistake twice. As soon as everything was back in place I tucked the information away in a spot where it could not be destroyed by some random act of Widget Monster Nomming.
And you know what? You should do the same. Please learn from my misfortunes. Back up your work in some way right…NOW.
GO.
And when you’re done, check this out as well.
Actually, by default of my brain being unable to retain memory of even the simplest html code, all code/text/photos/links in any text widget is already a draft post. It’s necessary for me to type it out there, make my linky-linky and then copy the html to the widget.
Somedays, being a moron comes in handy! Yayyyyy.
That’s a brilliant idea. Wish I’d done it. :(
I’m very big on something being wrong with the software and the design decisions it embodies when something goes wrong with released code. It should not be allowing you to mess up really badly or at least should be warning you when you’re doing something that could be destructive. It should try to shield you for making mistakes that take hours to recover from. I hate it when I have to spend my time making up for bugs in their broken software.
I’m also a firm believer in “It’s OK to make mistakes, but not the same one over and over again.” So, you’re doing the right thing. You’ll never make that mistake again.
Also, you might (emphasis on might) consider using an open-source source control system like Subversion. (If you want to, email me.) What Danger Lilly suggested is just fine as long as you always do it. Murphy’s Law is in full operation doing that. It’s the one you were too rushed to back up that’ll get ya.
Hang in.
Considering the thousands of operations WordPress has successfully carried out for me in comparison to the very, very few it’s fumbled, I think I’d probably be in more danger of screwing something up by adding another layer of software to the mix. :)
Good points.
It’s an axiom that there can’t be bugs in code that isn’t there, and I guess a corollary is that you can’t screw up using software that isn’t there.