One of the biggest issues addressed on the WordPress lists I subscribe to is the lack of a customizable form for the WordPress platform. The only form people really know about is inTouch, and you can’t exactly customize it.

Well, in my quest to redo forms on one of my websites that was hacked, I found a solution!!! The Form Assembly 2.0! It’s a great form that is VERY customizable, and all you have to do is insert the code into a page in WordPress! There’s also a bit of code you insert into the header file of your theme and some files to FTP to your server, but that is only if you need to apply their CSS to your form. If you don’t, then ignore those parts and just insert the code into a page!

There’s a free version that has ads associated with it, but the paid versions are cheap! A great, cheap, customizable form, and I can have as many as I want?! Works for Me!!!!!

Thirteen Things about LINDSEY

1. As you can see, I am back and ready to go! There was a bug in DirectAdmin, the software that the server uses, and it allowed hackers to manipulate anything running on PHP, especially WordPress. However, my host ROCKS, and in less than a week she had physically replaced the hard drive on the server, re-set up EVERYONE’S accounts, restored all the databases (in mint condition), and all websites were back up and running! She’s my favorite :-)!

2. As much as I hated the site being down, and as much as I missed blogging (I was gone less than a week, how pathetic am I?), it was probably good that I couldn’t blog. Last week we did an intense business simulation that absolutely consumed my week. I literally had time for NOTHING else. And that was supposed to be the easy week between sessions! I don’t know what they were thinking!

3. Speaking of . . . school is killing me. The further I get into this program, the harder and more intense it gets. I have NEVER had this much work for school. And it’s not easy work. Some of it makes sense . . . a lot doesn’t. I’m working hard to grasp the concepts, but there are SO MANY new ones that I feel like I’m lost. The schedule is crazy, the work is hard (and in high volume), and my brain doesn’t like to work this way.

4. One nice thing is I FINALLY have a roommate ;-)! Ben finally moved up here this past weekend, and it’s been really nice having him around. He’ll sit around and talk about artsy things with me, which apparently my brain is craving. It’s amazing how an intellectual conversation about something artistic makes my constant headache GO AWAY! Plus, Ben gives me hugs, which I was quite deficient on after a summer of living alone!

5. This sounds so trivial, but one of the things that has made school be so exhausting has been waking up MUCH earlier than I have been the past 4 years. I have to be up around 6AM and be sitting in the classroom ready to go for class at 8AM.

6. One of the things that has gotten me through those hard mornings is coffee! Yup, I was able to cross off #93 on my list of 101 in 1001 - I’ve switched from Diet Coke to black coffee in the mornings!

7. Another thing that gets me through the mornings - breakfast! When I was waking up at 11AM every day, it as easy to skip it, but now I eat it every day! Mark #18 off the list!

8. This past weekend (I didn’t have much homework) I was able to finish watching all the DVDs that I own. I had a couple of TV shows to go, but now I’m good! Cross #82 off!

9. As I posted in my post about backing up, I am now backing up both my websites and my hard drive regularly, knocking off #67 and #68 on my list!

10. Tomorrow my parents, brother, and cousin are all coming up here. And on Friday Bo (my brother) will be moving onto campus at Elon University, 45 minutes from my apartment. He’s growing up so fast, I can’t believe he’s starting college!

11. Along with all my family, the puppies are coming to visit! And since they’re all gonna be busy moving Bo in (and my parents will be staying in a hotel), the puppies get to live with me for the weekend! Woo hoo!!!! I’m so excited, they’re so adorable, and I miss them so much! They are Cavalier King Charles Spaniels - the black one (Tricolor) is Olive, and the tan one (Blenheim) is Ella :)!

12. After browsing around blogs yesterday, I found a post about FlyLady - and decided to join. We’ll see how it goes!

13. Before the crash I did a lot of blogroll checks for Thursday Thirteen, and now that I’m back, I’m gonna pick up where I left off! It was actually a lot of fun because I visited a lot of sites that were newer to the blogroll, so I hadn’t seen them before. But goodness, we’ve got a lot of participants now, LOL!

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!
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We’ve all done it. We’ve all had the best of intentions to backup our sites, our hard drives, etc. And of course, we don’t do it for months on end, and then you’ve got a crash and lost a lot of hard work.

I was VERY fortunate that I was able to recover all of my databases and themes for my websites. I however, I was really really stressed out for several days because I didn’t know if my last minute backups worked, if they were corrupted by the hackers . . . I just didn’t know if I’d be able to recover anything.

Loyal readers will remember that I had a big computer crash a month or so ago, and I lost months worth of data. It’s obvious that I need a system here, and I’ve been meaning to set up something for about a year. Finally, I’ve been hit over the head enough times that I’ve actually started to back things up.

The most important backup (in my opinion) is your computer backup, because you can backup your websites all you want, but if you don’t have a backup of your computer and your computer crashes, then you’ve lost your website backups too. Backing up your hard drive can be tedious and annoying.

However, I found an article on one of my favorite sites (Lifehacker) that has revolutionized my back up system. Previously I always backed up on occasion to DVDs, and every once and a while to my external hard drive. But then I read “Automatically Back Up Your Hard Drive.” I’m not even going to try to explain the system because the article is so user-friendly. Just go read it. I’ve been doing this for about 2 weeks (I actually started it 2 days before the server was hacked, so my backups were helpful in restoring my sites), and this system is great. It sets up nightly, weekly, and monthly backups that are automated. You don’t even have to be at home! And if something goes wrong with the backup, it sends you an email with a detailed report. How amazing?!

So now that I’ve got a great backup system for my hard drive, I can feel safe in backing up my sites. What’s the best method for backing up a WordPress install? You don’t actually need to save all the files on your site. For a WordPress install, it’s actually best NOT to save all the php files. If something goes wrong, then you’ll be saving all the errors (or hacked code, as the case may be). The things that are important are your wp-content folder and your database. If you do a database backup (there is a GREAT plugin for WordPress that allows for one click backups . . . super easy to use), then you’ll have all your posts, pages, settings, user accounts, etc. All that’s left is your design. Your wp-content folder holds all your themes and plugins. If you backup your database and your wp-content, then you could theoretically completely erase your WordPress install and start from scratch. You would do a brand new install of WordPress, then restore the database from your backup and upload the wp-content folder, and it would be like nothing ever changed! This only works if you’re restoring to the same domain that you had initially had the site. If you want to change domains (or even subdomains), then there is another process. But this is EXCELLENT for backups.

Another big backup that I always worry about is my email and my bookmarks within my browser. If you’re using Firefox and/or Thunderbird, this backup is a cinch too! There’s a great program called MozBackup that will back up your profile and all your data for you. It’s pretty much a one click backup, and this program will also restore your backup. I’ve done this MANY TIMES to switch computers, restore after a crash, etc. This is great backup tool as well.

I’ve actually posted a guest post over at Recommended about backing up too (I made that post while I was unable to post over here, before the restore).

What do you do to backup your data? Any great tips you want to share with readers?

Update: Well, the unthinkable happened. Not only do I use my external hard drive for backups, but also for storing alllllll my digital photos. And after 2.5 years of hard work, my drive has died. Now I have to spend more than $200 to try and recover my data because I didn’t think to KEEP A SECOND COPY!!! Make a DVD or something with any files that you don’t have stored elsewhere . . . sigh, you think I’d learn . . .

I’m so sorry that I’ve been gone all week. Last Thursday, the server that hosts my websites was hacked, and then over the weekend it was crashed completely. My host worked like an angel though. She replaced the hard drive on the server, got everything loaded back up, and here I am, with all my posts and everything!!! She’s amazing ;-)!

So, since things have been frantic this week and since I just got my blog back yesterday, I don’t have a Thursday Thirteen for this week. However, please check out last week’s entry on the technical side of blogging. I’m really sorry that it didn’t get to display the entire day last Thursday, so go run take a look at it!

Sorry I haven’t been around, but I’m back now and sooo ready to go!!!