Don’t live in fear of a blog meltdown. Make a backup. Photo: U.S. National Archives
This isn’t an online journalism post, but a Public Service Announcement to fellow bloggers.
A few journalism-related blogs I read regularly have gone down recently, thanks to idiot hosting companies and soulless hackers. So a word to the wise: spare yourself major agony, go into your admin tools and create a backup of your blog database (and, um, not on the same server your blog is on).
[UPDATE: Richard Koci Hernandez recommends this WordPress backup plug-in.]
Here are instructions for WordPress, Movable Type and Blogger. Do it yesterday. It really only takes a few minutes.