Yesterday I upgraded the Tarski theme on my website to the latest version. In the process, my custom style file and header image were deleted. Today when I went to check on things, I realized that my site was broken and quickly discovered the reason. At work, I don’t have a snapshot of my site readily accessible. But I do have VaultPress.
Through a few clicks, I was able to download a snapshot of the themes directory from the day before I upgraded Tarski. A few more clicks, and those files were uploaded back to my server. My site is once again fully functional.
Thank you, VaultPress, for providing such a robust, easy to use service! Rather than having my site down for the rest of the day, I was able to fix the theme problems and get it back up and running in under five minutes. In my opinion, that is well worth the monthly subscription fee. And that’s saying something considering that I’m a poor, starving graduate student.
As I have said before, my blog is my memory. Everywhere I go and everything I do that is significant is posted here. Were I to lose it, it would be like having the family albums, my diary, and all of my records burn in a fire. Even with periodic backup snapshots kept locally, I have much better peace of mind knowing that there is a continuous backup being kept in a secure facility.