I had a heart-stopping moment a short while ago.

I was updating a blog post (just fixing some spelling errors), clicked save / update, and I got an error message that said something about there being do data and that maybe the article had been deleted.

So I refresh the page, but I get the same error.

I go back to my main blog page (which looks fine, since it is cached), but when I click on any blog post, I get a page not found error.

Next stop: the wordpress admin dashboard.

I quickly see that wordpress thinks I have zero posts, zero pages, 20 categories, and over 2000 tags

It looks like some things are ok, but all of my 850 posts have disappeared!

But I quickly remember that I setup the Computer Aid blog to perform a weekly database backup, so it shouldn’t be a total disaster.

But before I start restoring databases, I figure I’ll have a look at the database using myphpadmin:

• log into my website cpanel
• in the databases section, click on myphpadmin
• in the phpmyadmin page, click on the wordpress database
• in the list of database tables, click on the wp_posts table, and I get a message saying: wp_posts is marked as crashed and should be repaired

So it looks like I might be able to fix things without a database restore.

So I go back to the list of database tables, and at the bottom, I click on “check all”, and then to the right, I click on the “with selected” dropdown, and select “repair table” (be careful not to select “empty” or “drop” !).

After a few seconds, everything is fixed, and the Computer Aid blog is running once again.