Prepare your Shopify store for the worst

The last two weeks at my house have been nothing short of completely bonkers. Most importantly, we’re all safe and healthy. It just felt like a whirlwind.

To start, we lost power for nearly 70 hours. Fortunately, we were prepared. Well mostly prepared.

We’ve been accumulating items for our emergency kit over the years and it finally came in handy. We had plenty of candles, batteries, radios, flashlights, and even glow sticks to name a few. The glow sticks helped to entertain our 8-year-old and provide light in the bathrooms at night. But mostly entertainment.

We had battery backups for laptops and cellphones. Though eventually, we did have to borrow power from neighbors as our backups can only go so far.

The food was also covered. Canned beans, rice, flour, and pasta filled our pantry. Although we’ve been stocking up pantry items in the case of an emergency, we failed to ensure we had pantry items that didn’t need cooking.

Whoops!

Thankfully, the entire neighborhood wasn’t without power. We ran to the store to get non-cook shelf-stable food.

Because the power had been out for so long, we hadn’t watched the news and only checked emails when needed to keep our cell batteries charged. Within two hours of the power coming back on, we realized the Oregon wildfires were too close for comfort. The evacuation levels bordered our neighborhood. With the high winds that knocked out our power in the first place, the need to evacuate wasn’t far-fetched.

Everything that was in our emergency kit now had to get packed into our backpacks in case we had to evacuate. We prepared for needing to hunker down at home, not necessarily for evading wildfires.

We are fortunate enough to have recently fixed our air conditioner. With the power back on, we kept the smoke at bay and out of the house with the addition of a box fan filter.

We know others are not so lucky and for that, I am humbled.

A week and a half later, things finally cleared up. The rain came and every Oregonian was relieved for fresh air and blue skies.

I did take some time to reflect on what we could have done differently. Could we have been more prepared? What would we have done if the whole neighborhood was without power?

We never know when something like this could happen. Every business needs to have a backup plan and that includes your Shopify store. You depend on Shopify to keep your site running even during emergencies like this.

Shopify only protects you at the platform-level. If Shopify has a problem with its servers, for example, they’d be able to recover the entire platform.

Yet a platform recovery does not necessarily recover your store data.

To put this in perspective, when the power went out all over Portland, the electric company worked day and night to get the power back on. The food in my refrigerator that spoiled from no power for three days – all garbage.

To mitigate my losses, I could have purchased a backup generator or installed solar panels. Think of this as insurance for my food.

Insurance for your Shopify store? That would be ensuring you’ve got all your data backed up with Rewind. If you’re not currently a customer of Rewind, I encourage you to become one. Using that link to sign up gets you your first month free.

Please don’t learn the hard way. I promise it won’t be a fun experience.