I am attending the National Information Officers Association conference in Reno, NV. Today I co-presented a session on social media. My co-presenter was Mary Grady from the Los Angeles Police Department.

Following my presentation, I advised the attendees that I would post my Powerpoint to my website for them to download.

This afternoon I created a sub-directory to place these files. As I created the directory it somehow over-wrote the existing master directory for my web site. I did not that it had done that. When I could not work within the sub-directory I "assumed" that I had not been successful in uploading it and was receiving a false folder image. I deleted the folder image. Immediately I realized the severity of this mistake as I watched the file names of my entire directory scroll by at a rapid rate.

Yes, I deleted my entire web site and all sub directories. Essentially, my entire web presence at richpalmer.com was going away before my eyes. Podcasts, blogs, music files, client folders… all of it.

I immediately contacted my host provider (Quality Host Online) to advise them of my inane act. Within a few hours they had rolled my site back to the backup from yesterday.

In my many years working online (since 1994), I’ve not made a mistake such as this. It would not have been as critical to me had I been home (redundant backups always advised), but I am traveling and had no way to easily correct the error myself.

Thank you Quality Host Online! http://snurl.com/3jqri [www_qualityhostonline_com]

BTW, Reno NIOA conference attendees can now find the Powerpoint in the directory mentioned.