Your WP Backup might just be bad

I just finished reading a thread in here about the possibility of WP Blogs being hacked. Well one of the comments recommended making a backup.

While I agree with the comment as a whole just know that the backup maybe bad.

Let me explain.

If you go to the trouble of setting up the backup and even establish a schedule along with saving copies of the backup data then I have one question.

How do you know the data is good?

You have a 50% chance that it is good and 50% chance that it is bad.

DID YOU TEST YOUR BACKUP DATA BY TRYING TO PERFORM A RECOVERY?

Now I am just shooting from the hip here but if I were a betting man then I would be betting that the majority of people performing backups have not tested them to see if it actually recovers the data.

Shame on you if you fall in this group because you ASSUME that it will work.

I used to be a corporate IT Auditor and I got in a heated debate with a department manager about this very topic. He was responsible for a million dollar computer system with significant financial data being processed on it. The backup tapes had never been tested and a Recovery Plan was never created or tested. The final result! No data was being saved to the tapes and his department received an Unsatisfactory audit. It was not a good day for him.

So think about it.

Can you recover your site if the data is bad?

So my advice (#1) is to backup and then recover the data to a sub-domain. At the very least you can execute a 301 redirect to the backup site in the event the primary site is ever compromised.

(#2) Have a recovery plan for all of your business. Don't be caught with your pants down. Even small businesses like ours can benefit from being prepared.

Good luck!