For me, the best and most complete way for me to absolutely learn something, is to experience a drastic crisis. And in that crisis, if I can find a way to feel empowered, I’m good to go. This morning, I found my sense of empowerment. By helping others, I help myself find serenity. My friend Rebecca asked this in a recent comment about my current situation:

“Any tips for the rest of us in blog land on backing up?”

Yes, as a matter of fact I do have some tips:

• Do a weekly export of your blog posts and save the file to your computer. If your blog does happen to crash, or even if you choose to move your blog elsewhere, you’ll have your posts, comments, tags, and categories. This, fortunately, has saved my posts.
  
• Use Microsoft’s Live Writer. Do not underestimate the quality and reliability of Microsoft. I could go on a long rant here but I’ll spare you. Live Writer is your friend. You can post to your blog from it and you will get professional looking posts, you’ll be able to manage your pictures, and so much more. There are numerous plugins available so you can upload to Flickr, insert an image to Flickr, and so, so much more. Furthermore, you can retrieve your posts and update them. This tool deserves a post all of it’s own—it is that good. This is a serious tool that no blogger should be without.
  
• Use a photo hosting service for your pictures. Flickr is great since it allows you to set permissions and uses a Creative Commons Copyright. There are other options. You want to use a photo hosting service and point your blog pictures to that location. Then, if you lose your data or switch blogging hosts, you will not waste countless hours rewriting your blog posts so your pictures show up. Lesson learned the hard way.
  
• Save copies of your template. Save copies of your template or customized CSS to your hard drive every time you change them! If you’re lucky enough to have access to your database (self-hosters) back it up!!!
  
• Use Microsoft’s SkyDrive. Microsoft is your friend folks. Don’t be fooled. Their Live accounts allow a user 25 GB of free space. You can back up your stuff there. You can password protect it too. You can share files with people in your group or make your files completely private. Your control.

Note to those who hate Microsoft: I will happily discuss this with you if you are a “Mac” instead of a “PC” and you feel the need to vent. Just let me know. I’m feeling a little feisty anyway since I’m totally aggravated at the moment with my former hosting provider…