Well, I just recovered from a bit of a freak-out.

One of my web hosts’ databases crashed so a number of the WordPress sites I managed were coming up with “Database connection error.”  The web host techs were quick to fix the database so the sites would come back up, but on one of the sites, all the posts were gone.

My first thought was to restore from a backup. I use WP Database Manager by … so I thought it would be an easy fix… until I saw the most recent backup was from March – 3 months ago.

And my freakout entered into stage two.

After I remembered to breathe, I thought maybe there is an error in WordPress that is misreporting the number of posts.  So I logged in to the MySQL admin and found a message saying several of the tables were in need of repair due to a server crash.

So I ran the repair function in the WP Database Manager plugin (I could have used the MySQL admin’s) and all the posts returned!

I checked the backup settings in WP Database Manager next and just resaved the settings.  It started working again.

So the moral of the story is don’t freak out when all you posts turn up missing.  Check the database for errors.

And make sure your backup is working.