The Day I Learned About Backups

Google just turned 10 year old. It almost seems like they've been around since the web replaced BBS's. At the time of this writing, google has a link on their main search page allowing you to search one of their oldest indexes. If you don't know what that means, I'll tell you. You can search for something as if you were searching for it back in 2001. Anyways, I like to "google myself" from time to time. Call it vanity... call it what you will... you do the same thing! I used the legacy search to see what "Byron Sommardahl" turned up from 2001. The results from that search re-opened an old wound, long since forgotten.

I've always been a sucker for a good project. Sometime during my sophmore year (around 1998 or 1999) at Lipscomb University in Nashville, a friend told me I should start a website that allowed people at Lipscomb to connect with one another, tell others about themselves, compare notes, talk about issues, etc, all without the imposing thumb of Lipscomb's administration. Being the budding entrepreneur and web developer that I was, I registered eLipscomb.com that night for $9.75. The next day, I started development on what would be Lipscomb's first independent social network.

A month or two later, eLipscomb.com was fully functional and heavily publicized. It offered email accounts to anyone who wanted an eLipscomb.com address, discussion forums, blogs (we didn't call them blogs back then, though), polls, and file-sharing for notes, homework and papers. We had ads in the campus newspaper, fliers all over campus, and sponsorships on the campus radio station. We formed a loose partnership with The Lipscomb Underground, a student-run rant newsletter, where we re-published their weekly posting on eLipscomb.com. We even had ads running on the site to generate revenue. Everything was humming along. Those were exciting times for the small staff of eLipscomb.com.

Did I mention that I was a "budding" web developer? Here's a question for you: What's one way to learn about backing things up that will ensure beyond a shadow of a doubt that you will never forget the lesson? Hmmm... do I even need to say what happened? It's almost too embarrassing to elaborate.

You can't have a successful website without generating some jealousy. My website was no exception. One night, while all was quite and peaceful on the campus of Lipscomb University, a person of malicious intent began scanning eLipscomb.com for possible security holes. He (yes, I think it was a "he") found one. He took the site down, deleting all the files. He destroyed the database. He laid waste of all that was eLipscomb.com. Users who visited the site got a blank screen. Dead.

I got the call during breakfast the next day. One of my staff had been told by a user that the site was down. I rushed to my dorm room, checked the site, and kept a cool head. "I should be able to have this back up and running in a matter of minutes," I thought. "I'll just restore a ba..." No backups. No mirror sites. No copies on disk. Nothing. How stupid.

The best way to learn to back things up is to lose something important to you. Who knows what eLipscomb.com could have become. We had even talked about expanding the concept out to other universities (apparently a good idea considering Facebook's popularity). After the site was lost, we decided to fold.

Today, I am continuing my dream of creating a social network space. This time, it's for neighborhoods instead of colleges. Do I have backups? Yes, I do... in three states. :)