Well, I wasn’t planning on posting this but then again, people should learn from my mistakes. Plus, it’s pretty easy to do and people should get in the habit of doing this; write all your posts and articles in a Word document prior to posting.
Now, it doesn’t necessarily need to be in a Word document, it could be a notepad, on a piece of paper, etc, basically, anything that you would have as a backup just incase anything happens.
And yes, that “anything” happened to me yesterday. I was writing the John Chow post directly through my Wordpress because I was in a bit of rush (plus, I was at work… my day job) and I basically finished the entire post… then my Mozilla Firefox froze!
Luckily, Firefox has an option to “Restore your last session.” Unfortunately, though, once I restored, it brought me back to where Wordpress last saved my post; which was only the first paragraph! So, I had to write the entire post over and of course, I didn’t remember every single point I originally made.
Now, I usually write all my posts on a Word document prior to posting that way I can just copy and paste it, plus, I can check for grammar and spelling mistakes easily.
Another reason, you should write a draft before posting. I know a lot of people don’t have time to do this (and neither do I, sometimes) but when I say “draft” I just mean a backup and something you can review or read before the post goes live and published for your readers.
Lastly, I know people backup all their server files regularly but what if one of those days someone hacks into your account or your server crashes and you lose all your posts? Well, maybe not all but usually when that happens you’ll lose your most recent ones.
Don’t believe me? Ask Jason of Theuniversitykid.com , it happened to him before. Also, it happened to Tyler Cruz of Tylercruz.com when his account got hacked into. Of course, it was one of the days where I guest posted so my post was deleted. Luckily, I was smarter back then and had a backup on my Word document!
The only thing was I made some minor changes directly in the Wordpress post, so I just had to remember what those changes were.
So all and all, wouldn’t you rather be safe than sorry?
Oh, and the picture of the people grinding, I put that there because people need to "back it up." Okay, that was corny…
I have never thought of wrtiting the post first in Word and transport it later to WordPress but I’ll surely keep that in mind.
Aha, you did the right thing to explain why you choose that sexy image for this post. I was expecting a lame Microsoft Word icon or something. But I like it seriously.
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I have to remember to continue doing that. Sometimes I do and then again most times I don’t.
Great for spell checking as well and grammitcal errors if you are that picky LOL
I’m using Windows Live Writer. It allows you to save drafts and it keeps track of posts you’ve published. So if your server goes crazy, you’ll have your backup automatically.
Very useful indeed
I’m kinda old fashioned
I write it down in a notebook first, then type it in Word for two reasons, 1) backup 2) as english is not my native language, I use word to check my spelling and orthography. Nonetheless, you’ve made a good point in your post.
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I will write my posts in word if I am away from the iternet, or if where I am does not have firefox (because of spell check) I am a horrible speller and not a good typist so there are lots of errors (as I re-read this twice) :))
It may be a good idea to use word all the time - the new Word 2007 has some kind of blog posting feature, but I don’t have that one yet.
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just remember that Word many times brings over formatted text when you copy and paste from it. So you can also use Notebook, or other native text editors to avoid the formatting that comes with using Word.
I agree 100% that you can never to enough backups or even have enough back up resources like alternative internal password protected hard drives for just backups, external hard drives for backups, thumb drives, or even additional stuff like carbonite.com for another layer of security. Our company is about to start using carbonite on top of everything else.
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Political Disgust
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Mmmmmmmm, grinding…lol.
No man, no Word! You copy with the text all sort of codes when you paste it to WordPress, especially when you format the text.
I rather use Gmail draft for my first writing attempts. But then again, not even Gmail is safe. It happened to me more than once to hit the delete button and lose my draft…forever!
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I thought that wordpress automatically saves what you type every few seconds?
So true, save your work and backup files often. Well said.
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What about a blogging platform like scribe fire or something along those lines? Pro’s Con’s?
I already did write my articles in Word. Why? Not only to have a backup but also to make sure that I don’t misspell a word!
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Yan - LOL! Yeah, so many people always question the “hot chicks” pictures but I always have a reason! LOL!
Wendy - Yeah, I slacked off for a few weeks but now I’m back with the Word stuff before posting.
Louis - I might have to check that out. WP also saves automatically but it wasn’t as frequent as I’d like… I mean, I type pretty fast.
Anthony - Old fashion is not a bad thing! But damn, that must be time consuming!
Barry - Yeah, I got into the habit of typing in Word, especially when I don’t have internet access. But I don’t have Word 2007 yet either.
Political Disgust - Yes, it does change the text and format but in WP it’s just as easy to fix that. But backup = good.
Tammy - LOL! I assume you like to grind? Hmm?!
Mary - It should be just as easy to reformat the text and stuff in WP.
Komodo - I thought the same thing but it’s not every few seconds… I found that out the hard way.
Real Web - Yes, backup up often… don’t rely on automatic saving stuff.
PublicRecordsguy - I don’t have much knowledge with scribe fire or anything. I’ll look into it though.
BioTecK - LOL! I think we all use Word for grammar and spelling! LOL!
Jay