Such a simple task but not everyone is doing it. If you do not know how to backup your data please call your hosting company and ask them to walk you through it. I know HostGator has a tutorial video in their cPanel.

Three Examples Why:
Andrew, a friend of mine and one of my developers almost lost 75+ of his websites. I couldn’t believe it when the guy that does my backups doesn’t do his own. Luckily for him it was an operating system issue and was able to recover all of his data. Downside was it took 2-3 days to get everything back online. You can read everything he has to say about it at DayOnlineSolutions.com.

DNUnderground.com, a domaining blog, lost everything over the weekend. In this case his hosting company was not able to recover anything. Luckily he contacted me, thanks to Andrew (my developer) I was able to walk him through recovering the majority of his articles. We instructed him to do a Google search, site:dnunderground.com and select the cached articles one by one. Using this simple trick he was able to copy the majority of his articles, titles and dates. Once the site is back online it is a simple cut and paste of the articles with dates and titles. This worked for this occasion but will not always work, it depends on how often Google visits and caches your site.

YGrab.com, another domaining blog, lost everything in August. Since losing everything only 14 posts have been made, one of which to say backup your data.

Personally, if I lost all of my files I don’t think I could blog again. Two reasons, one I couldn’t imagine starting from scratch and two because I would be too embarrassed. How embarrassing to be in this business and not back up your files.

Please do not learn the hard way, backup your sites ASAP. I did a complete backup last night, took 24 minutes, which will be worth every minute if my sites go down. From that point I only need to do regular backups for my content. This I will do once or twice a week which should only take a few minutes.

One last thing, do not expect your hosting company to save you. As stated below backing up your files is a courtesy, not an obligation. I found this in my HostGator account, similar to any of the hosting companies out there. “Your use of this service is at your sole risk. Our backup service is provided to you as a courtesy. HostGator is not responsible for files and/or data residing on your account. You agree to take full responsibility for files and data transferred and to maintain all appropriate backup of files and data stored on HostGator servers“. Basically your loss and you can’t sue. Backup your files!!!

Woooo Hoooo this is my 100th blog post!!!

In the spirit of my 100th blog post I will give away a $25 gift card (Amazon or GoDaddy) to the 100th comment posted. No more than 3 comments per person and no spam comments, at least one sentence please. There is a 48 hour time limit, 100th comment must be made within 48 hours of this post.

Just an FYI about comments, I reward my top 6 commentators at the bottom of the site. This is a great way to get a few extra visitors to your site and of course backlinks.

Here is my second video blog, enjoy

Sorry, couldn’t get it to 3-4 minutes.

OK now that you have watched the video, get entered into the contest.  Visit my previous contest post HERE.

CLICK HERE TO BUY A MINI-SITE AND ENTER THE NEW CONTEST

Previous mini-site winners:
EuropeanBeaches.com
BabyProof.org

Wow, thank you everyone for the comments about the new theme, site name and direction. I am still making some updates and changes so bare with me over the next few days.

As you already know from my previous post the direction of this site has changed a little. Instead of strictly talking about domain names and the domain world I am going to shed more light on how to make money online. While I learn to make money online I will be sharing those experiences so you can repeat my results, hopefully just the good.

Want to know more about my past, read the who’s cooking page which was just updated.

Goals For 2009

Earn $20,000 a month from virtual real estate by the end of the year. Virtual real estate to me would include domaining, blogs, development, mini-sites, affiliate programs and so forth. Of my goal, at least $5,000 would be from this blog. Yes I said $5,000 from this blog. There are bloggers making $40,000 a month easily. Do me a favor, if you are one of those negative people that think this goal is unobtainable, stop reading now and leave my blog. To be successful you want to surround yourself with successful, like-minded, positive people. If you are a believer and continue to read my site I promise to reward you by learning how to make money online.

Earn $5,000 a month in physical real estate. Honestly this will be a piece of cake, prior to selling my real estate companies seven months ago I was making in excess of seven figures per year. I plan on working a few short sales and take part in some teaching. Two questions I can anticipate being asked is, why am I not doing real estate full time and why only $5,000 a month. Basic answer, I am tired of real estate, bored and burnt out. I plan on spending a max of 10 hours per month (from home) to meet my goal.

Blog at least once per day seven days a week.

Answer emails when I open them. I find myself opening an email and letting it go for a few days. Simple solution, respond immediately.

Unplug! I spend far too much time in front of the computer and not enough time with my family. It is actually pretty sad when you’re having internet withdrawels. The power went out the other night for about an hour or so and all I could think about was getting back on the internet. I think there can be a happy medium to this. I plan on purchasing a laptop shortly, this will allow me to at least be in the same room as my wife and kids while writing an article or researching a project.

I’m not 100% sure on this goal but just maybe loose 10 pounds. I know that sounds girly but for the first time ever I hit the scale and it said over 200 pounds. My kids are running around and saying daddy is 204, blah blah blah.  My normal weight has been low 190′s, I think the holiday and getting up there in age (31) is what’s doing it. Plus I can feel the 10 pounds, it doesn’t feel good. Ok enough of that, lol. I’ll have to really think about this goal. I’m sexy the way I am.

Want to read my wife’s goals? Check out her blog, Mominator.com. I am very proud of her, she is doing very good. She even has a pretty strong following in the mom blog world.

SURPRISE!

DNKitchen.com is no more. As you can see I created a completely new site with a new look and feel to it. Most of you already know me as Chef Patrick so this should be an extremely easy transition. Plus don’t worry, all the old links and feeds will continue to work.

I created this newer blog, honestly, because I wanted to talk about other things in addition to my main passion of domaining. Domaining is and will continue to be a main focus of mine. Without having to build 5 different sites I decided to just have one that I can talk to you guys on about those different things.

Another focus will be making money online. I want to see for myself if it’s possible to make the kinds of crazy money some of these guys out there are making. As I’m going through this adventure I want to be able to share it with you. The creation of this site allows for much broader conversations. Think of it as a one stop shop to talk about our passion, domaining, and then some.

I HOPE you guys enjoy the new site and will continue on this journey of growth with me. I am lucky to have wonderful readers like yourselves and hope you’ll trust me enough to see this change will make things more fun and informative around here.

I will post more tomorrow about my goals and the direction of ChefPatrick.com. To be honest the site change over took a lot longer than expected and I am really tired. I still have to add some links and a few tweaks tomorrow, in the mean time if you see something out of place please let me know by posting a comment.

Nothing to worry about, DNKitchen.com is not going anywhere.

I am talking about my personal blog.  Before DNKitchen I started off writing about my personal domaining experiences on DomainSubway.com.  Over time I have noticed the posts growing apart more and more to recently maybe once a month.  I have decided to remove the blog and post everything on DNKitchen.com from this point forward.  DomainSubway.com will be used strictly for my domain name portfolio, not all but most of it.

When you get a chance take a look at the revised layout and my domain name portfolio.