Sometimes I’m a proper idiot and do something truly stupid. A few days ago I was doing a routine update to a new client’s website and I edited a critical file with new software.

I’m going to share this story with you because I learned something that might be useful to you one day.

Without me realising, until it was too late, the application had stripped half the code and replaced it with gobble-de-gook. By the time I had realised, the original file on both my computer and the web server had been replaced with the corrupted one.

And I had no backup.

To replace this one file would have required either a whole lot of non-billable hours, on my part re-developing it, or grovelling to the client’s previous developers. To make it worse, it was a Sunday and noone was answering their phones or emails.

After half an hour, however, I got a brainwave: If I were Microsoft, I would allow flawed humans like me to recover previous versions of files.

Sure enough, right-clicking on the file in question revealled the properties of the file, along with a tab that I’d never noticed before: “Previous Versions”. I clicked on the only previous version that Windows had kept for me and recovered the file.

Kudos to Bill.

You can bet that from now on I’ll be backing up even when making small changes but I’m sharing this with you because it might be useful to you one day. We’re all human and one day you might make a similar mistake – and now you’ll know how to fix it! How’s your online reputation?

Every once in a while I search for my name and trading name on Google to see what people can find about me. In addition to this I use a service called Google Alerts that sends me regular emails whenever those results change.

To set up your own alert, visit: http://www.google.com.au/alerts?hl=en