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I have learned the hard way how important it is to backup your blog or website or even your computer for that matter.

What if tomorrow your blog or hosted website files were hacked into and were changed or destroyed what would you do? Or worse yet- what if your host went belly up and no longer existed flushing all of your blogging files (it has happened)?

Recently the hard drive on my laptop went down and I was sure glad that I had signed up for Carbonite two weeks before. I had all sorts of files and the backups for my blogs and websites on that computer and I would have lost a bunch of stuff that would have been impossible to replace.

After my computer geek son put in a new drive I was able to successfully retrieve it all from Carbonite.com with virtually one click.

On another occasion hackers broke into my hosted blog files and set up some websites of their own at my expense. Since I had it all backed up I was able to transfer all of my blogging files to a new hosting site and flush the old one including 100’s if not 1,000 of business and whatever sites that a bunch of Romanian and Russian hackers had placed there.

That was a few years ago and now there are all sorts of new sites that make automatic backups of your websites and blogs much easier than it used to be. Here is an article from Blogging Pro reviewing some of the current free or inexpensive options:

3 FREE (Or Cheap) Ways To Safely Back Up Your Blog

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Huge comprehensive article loaded with lots of good ideas for increasing traffic to your website or blog. Written by Daniel Scocco of Daily BlogTips.

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Here’s an article from the Internet Evangelism Day website exploring how cell phones and mobile devices could be used in evangelism:

Mobile phones and other devices: The potential for evangelism

Cells and mobile devices are now being used all over the world even increasingly in 3rd world countries including many that need to hear the Gospel. So this is a timely article especially in this country where almost everyone has cell phones and devices and so many participate in social networking of some kind on the Internet.

The article presents some good ideas and strategies both for personal use locally and in far away undeveloped places. Plus links to a variety of resources to help you out.           *Top

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Here’s the beginning of a series on developing and designing a Facebook fan page on Ministry Vault blog:

Facebook Fan Page Design

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WordPress 3.0 is suppose to be faster, leaner, meaner, and safer yet you can supposedly power one blog or 10 million from one installation. See the video tour above. However, when the opportunity came to upgrade my WordPress blogs on Thursday, I only did my ‘Testsite’ to see ‘what if’.

Re: Testsite

While we are at it, let me tell you about my ‘testsite’. I have a testsite blog that I use to see how new plugins, apps, and new themes work before I make changes on any of my regular blogs. The testsite is blocked from search engines even though it is on the Internet. It has been a real help over the years and has kept me from making fatal errors on any of my 10 WordPress blogs.

WordPress 3.0

The upgrade went well on the testsite so on Friday morning I began to upgrade all of my WP blogs from 2.92 to 3.0. This ended up being the fastest upgrade with the least trouble I have ever done. It was one click and Literally less than one minute per blog, what a surprise!

3.0 is a major update and in the past I have always experienced some kind of trouble in upgrading and was ready for a day of it. However, this went way faster than I anticipated. 10 blogs, 10 clicks, in 15 minutes and I was in blog heaven.

Initial Impressions

Everything is working so far so good. Usually with a major upgrade some of my plugins, themes, or apps end up giving me some trouble but so far this has not been the case though it is still early.

I really like the one click new feature that allows you to upgrade a number of plugins all at once. What a time saver with all of the new upgrades coming on line in response to the new version.  

The new notification and upgrade system in place for themes is great but also is a real pain if you have some themes that you are never going to use but have to upgrade just to clear the ‘upgrade’ note off the dashboard. I have found it just as easy to go to the theme menu and delete the unneeded theme rather than to upgrade something I’ll never use anyway.

Note that if it is a theme you are using, any upgrade could eliminate the custom changes that you have made to the theme. Fortunately, WP 3.0 reminds you of that fact before you click on theme upgrade button. A very useful notification and reminder indeed!

I will spend the weekend exploring some of the new features so maybe there will be more to come on the new WP 3.0.

Here’s a link to the WP info site on the new 3.0 version. 

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Here’s a checklist from DailyBlogTips to use before you hit the ‘Publish’ button and send that new post into the blogosphere:

1. Did I read the post after writing it?

2. Is the post as complete as it could be?

3. Did I research the related keywords?

4. Did I craft the title carefully?

5. Did I proofread it?

6. Did I link to one or more of my older posts?

7. Did I link to external resources when appropriate?

8. Did I make sure all links are working?

9. Did I credit any sources I might have used?

10. Did I include an enticing image?

11. Did I optimize the permalink?

12. Did I add one or more elements to engage readers?

13. Is this a good day for traffic?

Go to the article and read what the author- Daniel Scocco has to say about each one of the points on his checklist. It is a very helpful list.

Response: This is an important issue that can really affect your credibility. Careless mistakes and missing or broken links leave a bad impression with your readers. In fact poor editing can actually detract from the message itself.

One good idea is to have blogging friends or family members check out your posts and be honest. Many times another set of eyes will see stuff that you may have missed.

How many times have you discovered typos and missing or misused words in posts that you have already published? It still happens to me. However, it doesn’t happen nearly as often as it use to since I have developed my own pre-publication checklist.

For some reason I always seem to see the mistakes better after it is published. I have made considerable progress in this area by using the ‘previewing’ feature in my editor and seeing what the published post will actually look.

My current ‘pre-publication checklist’ is far more elementary than the one above. I suggest that you develop your own—here’s mine:

1. Spell Check the first draft

2. Proofread and rewrite

3. Come up with an interesting and relevant title

4. Provide links to sources

5. Find a relevant image

6. Links to previous articles on the subject

7. Add keywords and categories

8. Use ‘Preview’ feature and do a final proofing.

9. Publish and check it out.

10. Make panic changes (What I’m trying to eliminate)

*Top

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How are you represented on the Internet? Does Google know you?

It is really important for a church, a ministry, an organization, or even an individual to do a search once in a while and find out what comes up about you on the Net. You might be surprised.

I was surprised one time when I ‘googled’ a church org that I’ve been part of for 20 years and found all sorts of negative misleading junk. Some of the stuff were down right lies.

Remember that the entries on first few Google search pages carry all sorts of implied authority whether they’re true or not. Plus the whole world may be reading it and taking it serious for better or worse. One way or another it is good to know. Especially if there is some negative info that needs to be addressed.

Here’s a good article to read on this subject by Phil Cooke: “Optimize Search Engines to Optimize Your Perception”

*Top

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Here’s is an observation made by Walt Wilson, founder and CEO of Global Media Outreach during a recent conference at Biola University:

“By 2015 there will be WiFi everywhere on the face of the earth.”

“We are the first generation in all of human history to hold within our hands the technology to reach every man, woman, and child on the earth by 2020. Our generation has within its grasp everything that is required to fulfill the Great Commission.”

Gordon Marcy responded to the speech given by Wilson with 8 points of his own:

1. God is creating the global network.

2. God’s purpose is clear.

3. The church is not immune from change.

4. Global is the new local.

6. Internet evangelism is efficient.

7. A call for global partnerships.

8. Building better models requires experimentation.

Read the whole article and what Marcy says about each one of the points.               *Top

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Here’s an article at Tutorial9 that compares the speed and reliability of the most popular Caching plugins for WordPress:

“WordPress Caching: What’s the best Caching Plugin?” by Kyle Robinson Young

It is a comprehensive analysis of best caching plugins. Interestingly Young also presents an effective ‘do it yourself’ alternative. In his conclusions he finds that Hyper Cache or W3 Total Cache are best available and perform far better than the old standbys -WP-Cache and WP Super Cache.

Why is ‘caching’ important?

It increases the loading speed of your site.

It is particularly useful as your traffic increases and will come in real handy if you ever have a post go viral. A Good caching plugin can make your blog ‘digg’ or ‘Stumble’ proof.            *Top

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