Controling Damage

In running our sites now and then bad things happen, in my case I accidentally overwrote the production db with an out of date testing db that was some months old. Add a few borked backups to the mix and I had to revert back to a db that was approximately 6 weeks old. Lost some posts and users along with a lot of good info.

Often this will annoy your members, they have invested time and effort in growing your site and in one fell swoop that effort is gone. So how can we limit the damage and keep your current members engaged.

I did the following:

Site down message was not the generic vB message but was:

Posted a mea culpa front and center on the home page explaining what happened and apologizing. This was in place when the site came back on line for members.

Sent a newsletter titled "Special Whoops Edition" to all members with basically the same info as above.

The comments back from the members has been overwhelmingly positive. Most everyone has experienced data loss and can empathize with the issue. I think the key is communication. Crafting a post that does not point fingers but explains in plain language what happened, why and how it was fixed goes a long way in building rapport with the members of your community. Many replies mentioned how some competing sites had data loss issues and the members were not informed. Keep your members in the loop and they will reward you with loyalty.

By far the comments back from the members has been positive such as...

 

At least you had backups.


I agree. Simply letting them know what happened will win loyalty. Many sites don't even bother telling people what happened at all.




Marginally related:
It is especially frustrating when peoples posts disappear because the broke a rule, because people are not sure what happened. I've seen simply deleting posts/threads the norm on a few forums e.g. location & price was not given in a for sale thread.

 

In daily backups we trust

 

In automatic daily backups we trust, because if I had to do it manually it wouldn't get done.

 

In verified automatic backups...yes.

The software was in place, the backups were empty due to a password issue.

 

Oh, ouch.

 

I have a daily database backup script installed, which backs up the database to an folder on the server every 24 hours.

Before any changes are made to the site, the database is backed up again.

Twice monthly I download the database backup to my home computer.

Never install anything on your site, without first having a backup of the database.