Does Your Blog Use Protection? What will you do if the bad guys decide to take your blog down? What will you do if some other technical mishap causes your blog to crash or otherwise be unavailable for use?
It is something that I have thought about quite a bit and not because I use this blog for business. The reality is that while I can say that I have made money through blogging and that this blog has led to multiple business opportunities it is not my primary source of income.
Truth is that if you look at the amount of time I spend here versus what I have earned my hourly rate would make indentured servants look wealthy. It is not a secret to say that I hope to change that. It is not a secret to say that I hope that one day this will be my primary source of income or if not that, a significant part of it.
However that is not the case now and I am ok with that. I am good with it because I love writing and I love blogging. My daughter has a passion for fashion. Me, well I have a passion for blogging.
But that is also part of the reason why I have taken steps to protect my blog. I have invested too much time here to just hope that nothing happens.
Here Is What I Have Done
I signed up for Vaultpress and for Sucuri Security. As an FYI the link to Sucuri Security is an affiliate link, Vaultpress is not but if they offered a program I would have participated. Got to pay for both programs and there is no harm in trying to find ways to help cover costs.
Yep, I am using paid services to protect my blog. So let me give you some information about both of them so you know what I am doing.
Vaultpress Basic Plan
“VaultPress provides realtime, continuous backup and synchronization of every post, comment, media file, revision and dashÂboard setting across at least two separate cloud services in addition to the Automattic grid, ensuring no loss of content.
How? Using WordPress hooks to receive alerts when information changes on your site, VaultPress immediately syncs all of your changes with our servers. The net result? 11 copies of your data, backed up continuously and in realtime.”
Sucuri Security
It took about 20 minutes to sign up and set up both systems. I am not naive enough to believe that my blog is now invulnerable because let’s face it even Superman had to worry about Kryptonite. If I have to continue with my inner geekiness I’d say that it is now a lot more like Wolverine.
Not bullet proof but pretty tough to kill and endowed with a very healthy constitution and the ability to heal quickly.
Most importantly I don’t feel like I am running naked down the street any more. There is no guarantee that you will be hacked or that you will have significant problems. In eight years of blogging I had relatively few but I am a big believer in having good insurance coverage and I am glad that I am not taking any chances any longer.
If you aren’t covered now and are interested in getting help I’d love it if you would use my affiliate link to do so.
Protect your sites with Sucuri!
Be well my friends. It is well past midnight and this old man needs to get some sleep. Good night from Los Angeles.
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Jens May 13, 2012 at 2:46 pm
I have been using Sucuri for a few years now, and it all started when my site got hacked. I had no idea what I was going to do, and the people at Sucuri helped me out, and after that, I became a proud customer.Â
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I am currently also using Vaultpress to back up my site, but I’m not sure if I’ll buy BackupBuddy instead. Vaultpress is fairly expensive in the long run, and BackupBuddy is a one time fee.
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But, to me, insurance is very important. I have been spending too much time and money working on my blog, and I would hate for something to go terribly wrong, even though I’m not making money from blogging 🙂
TheJackB May 13, 2012 at 7:09 pm
 @Jens I had been using BackUp Buddy but lately it has gotten kind of hinky so I moved over to VP. You are correct about the cost, it is not cheap.
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At the moment I don’t have time to mess around with BB to figure out what the issue is so Vaultpress seemed like a decent solution.
Jens May 14, 2012 at 9:18 pm
 @TheJackB That’s interesting. I’ll stay with VaultPress for a while, and since I’ve already paid for another year at Sucuri, I’ll stay with them as well. Now, I’m thinking about moving to a new host. I’m experiencing some downtime issues every time I publish a post – but that’s a rather big move, so I guess I should think about it some more 🙂
natashalarry May 12, 2012 at 6:08 am
🙂 Great post. I must admit, I clicked the link because of the title… aren’t we all guilty of that. This is great information. Thank you for sharing.
TheJackB May 12, 2012 at 9:45 am
 @natashalarry Hi Natasha. Glad it caught your eye. Sometimes you just have to dig a little to make people come visit.
I hope you find it to be useful.
bdorman264 May 12, 2012 at 4:25 am
And you can never have ‘too much’ insurance…………….just sayin’………………:).
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I’m not at a point where I worry about this, but something to keep in the back of my mind if I end up going where I would like to go.
TheJackB May 12, 2012 at 9:47 am
 @bdorman264 Hi Bill. Nope, never can have too much insurance. It costs a couple of bucks but for me I hate the idea that I could lose everything and have little recourse so…
Julie May 12, 2012 at 2:48 am
That;s so funny that you posted this as earlier this week someone was telling me to update my plugsins etc and what do you know – a plugin I don’t even use caused a Fatal Error and I couldn’t get into the dashboard. Â Yes I have a backup and yes I guess I could have called hostgator if I didn’t go into the cpanel and just delete the stupid plugin (which I wasn’t so sure was going to work when I did it but I got annoyed because I was busy doing other stuff so I just went for it). Â Anyway, great idea and you should keep promoting affiliates that you like.Â
TheJackB May 12, 2012 at 9:49 am
 @Julie | A Clear Sign Hi Julie. I have had some of those issues crop up more than once and have battled to fix everything. I like knowing how things work and I am prone to tinkering so I have caused some of my own issues.
I figure it is worth trying to protect my investment. Hope you find this to be useful too.