A Disaster Recovery Program is in Order

Frack it.

I got no one else to blame but myself. As I was toying around with blogger/blogspot templates, I must have inadvertently uploaded another template on my blog- "Blog. Blogger. Bloggest!"

Doing so takes out ALL your installed widgets- pictures, text boxes, html codes, etc. No do-overs on this one- once you've hit 'save template', you just kissed them all goodbye. I thought I may have undone it pressing the 'back' button. And while I may have been able to salvage the old code, the fact that I have to insert bits of code all over again to bring everything you once had back can be quite annoying.

Which is, unfortunately, where I'm at right now.

But, "glass-half-full" kind of guy that I am, I see this as an opportunity to consider a serious disaster recovery program for my blogs.

1. The texts in the text-boxes, fortunately for me, I can get from an old archive I keep in my hard disk- so it's just a simple matter of cutting and pasting it back. Or, I could just say 'screw it' and enter in an entirely new Introductory Message and other shameless self-promoting material.

2. Blogrush. Blogrush is a handy blog syndication service that cross-promotes your blog into other blogs of the same persuasion. It's a good way to check out what other bloggers are up to, and makes for great material and networking as well.

3. Technorati. Gotta load that Technorati button back. This allows your readers to 'bookmark' your blog as a favorite, and share it with other bloggers, which in turn gives you more 'authority points'. This works on the model that a positive reader experience gives you more credibility, and therefore brings in more traffic into your site.

4. Twitter. I think it's a nice touch- giving your blog a little personal flavor, giving your readers an idea of what you're up to.

5. Multiply. Oh, just a badge that links to my Multiply, social networking fiend that I am.

6. RSS Feeds. Damn, I gotta find all the feed URLs and encode them back in. Fortunately for me, I think I've been able to save all those on Google Reader- *checking* - oh, good, there they are :)

7. My various link lists: have to build em up again from scratch- online buds link list, blog-building link list and others.

Well it looks like I still got myself quite an amount of work to do. So I'll check you out in a bit.

Lessons Learned Today.

Pick yourself a template and stick with it :). Back your files up, even on notepad; at least export your blog as an xml every so often.

Cheers everyone!