Monthly Archives: February 2012

Back up your client’s files

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I was doing some website maintenance for a client recently and because I had already worked on this client’s site previously, I already had some of his pages in my text editor. So I pulled up his web page and made the necessary mods. Then I clicked on the “Put” button and got a message about how the file on the server had changed and asked if I wanted to overwrite it. I was almost going to just click the button but decided to pull the file off the server first and rename it to use as a backup.

Well, after I uploaded the file, I received a very angry email from my client informing me that I was working on an out dated page and I need to fix it asap. So I grabbed the backup file of his page and renamed it back to the original name and uploaded it. This fixed the problem right away and I was very thankful that I had made a backup of the file from the server before I overwrote it.

It appears that someone else had made changes to this client’s web page since I did the original mods and therefore the version I had on my pc was out dated. So the moral of this story is: Unless you are exclusively working on a clients site, always pull the server version of the file into your text editor before you start making any changes. This will ensure you have any new mods that someone else may have done without you knowing.

So back up, back up, back up. It’s so important!!

 

Sometimes Old Technology is Better!

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During one of my computer science classes in college. Our professor was discussing how new technology is replacing the old, and that things like tape are a thing of the past and have virtually been totally replaced by the much faster disc drives.

Then I remembered that the last company I worked for still used backup tapes to store all the company information. Each night someone would put a tape in the backup recorder before leaving for the evening. It would generally take about half the night for the tape to complete, which is of course much slower than a disc drive would be.

I started explaining to my professor that they used tapes because they are a safer backup media than a disc. My professor then pointed to an old tape she had brought in to show the class. She seemed very pleased to point out the piece of mangled tape hanging out the side of the cassette. I then told her that if she gave me the tape, I could take it home and cut off the damaged piece and splice it back together. I pointed out that only a very small portion of the data would be lost. I was also quick to point out that if a disc got badly scratched or broken, then the data loss would be far greater. By this time she had stopped smiling.

But please don’t get me wrong, I am the first to embrace the new technology. My point here is that sometimes, in certain circumstances, older and slower technology is better.