I Lost a Client's Database on a $5 VPS. Here's the 12-Line Script That Would Have Saved It.

It was a WordPress site on a $5 DigitalOcean droplet. Client's small business. Nothing fancy.

I had SSH access. I had root. I had every tool I needed to set up automated backups. I just... didn't. Because it was a small site. Because I'd "get to it later." Because the database was only 40MB and what could go wrong?

What went wrong was a botched plugin update that corrupted the wp_options table. No backup. No snapshot. No dump. Just a client on the phone asking why their site shows a white screen and me trying to explain that their content might be gone.

I rebuilt it from a cached Google version and a Wayback Machine scrape. Took two days. Billed zero.

That was the last time I ran a database without automated backups.