Be kind, rewind

We’ve all been there—from time to time a site becomes inaccessible, goes blank, or stops working altogether. This can be caused by many factors: the dreaded hacker, an unreliable host, a less-than-legit plugin, or a simple user error.

You might have a full database backup to bail you out, but restoring the database requires some technical knowledge and can be scary. With your site down you don’t want the fix to cause more panic than the original problem.

Wouldn’t it be great if there was something that not only backed up your site automatically and restore individual actions, but also kept an eye on your site so you knew when it was down and even helped you to fix it? Even better: it fixed it for you before you knew there was a problem!

Enter Jetpack Rewind.

Rewind is a backup system that leverages VaultPress which copies and safely stores the entire data set of your site. It does so continuously, intelligently, and seamlessly. From moments after you connect Jetpack to WordPress.com your data is safely backed up. When you need to restore any piece of information or previous state it’s available immediately in one simple click.

We’re working on integrating this into the site’s Activity section, which we’ve designed to show a stream of all the events happening on your site. By having this bird’s-eye view we can show who did what, to what thing, and when through a continuous timeline. We also tried to think about ways to expand the UI to not just that one thing, but offer a way to surface backups and particularly with restores—making it the ideal place to “rewind” a site.

It will tie seamlessly together with our entire Security Suite of products (Scan, Monitor, Protect, Antispam) to create a system that can intelligently inform you if something is wrong with your site (malware-infected files, site is not responding, etc.), or even proactively fix it.

Who wouldn’t want the assurance that all your sites are backed up at all times? And that if something happens to one (or all) of them, that you can go back in time and restore a previous state with ease?

Backups shouldn’t be technical, nor should restores. Having a site go down should not keep you awake at night, much less cost you real money in technical support or lost revenue.