Website backups are a topic we already covered but given how often we see sites with no backup it seems like a topic worth repeating.
All too often we work on cases that require an older website version as hackers broke parts of the site and it is amazing how often there is no backup of that website. If there is no backup, repairing the site means doing elements of the site anew and that is often a complex and long process your developer will have to deal with. There is no way of repairing them – they need to be rebuilt.Backups don’t seem like such a big deal until you need a backup…
Why are backups so important?
Unlike with physical things, digital things when broken or deleted can be replaced with a backed-up version rather quickly. In terrible disasters like fire or flood, your house will have to be repaired and/or rebuilt, but if some virtual misfortune was to hit your website, you can restore it from a backup you hopefully have and thus save a good amount of money.
Additional and less ominous and obvious reasons are audits of any type, analytics or versioning of sorts. There are numerous reasons why you might want to check how your website looked or behaved some time ago – you might want some new feature that looks or does not look to what you previously had, you might want to compare some feature to the one you have now to see which one behaves better etc.
Lastly, peace of mind! Being a business owner of any sort always comes with a level of stress…issues on your website is not something you need on top of that. Keeping your website regularly backed up will take some of the strain.
How to backup?
There are a couple of elements to have in mind when deciding on the backup technology. One of the things is how technical are you…and the good news is that most of the major CMSes have really good plugins and add-ons that can do it for you with minimal technical knowledge.
A good thing to check is if your hosting provides this service as part of their packages.
The next thing to think about is how often do you need to back up your website. That will greatly depend on the frequency you update the content and features of your website. Therefore this might vary from every few days to every few months.
Also, how big is your back up and do you have enough space on your server? A good rule would be to keep the backups on some separate location as well in case there is some bigger issue with your server environment. This will limit your options given space is limited, so plan your needs well.
One thing to have in mind is that for example if your website is hacked or maybe some new feature was not implemented well, you might also have a backup that has the same issue. Thus keeping more backups from various periods is a wise thing to do.
With all this said – the key here is to backup, backup and backup! It will potentially save you a lot of time, energy, money and nerves.
We Can Help Save Your Business
SITE FIXED IN LESS THAN 1 HOUR
WordPress website defaced ? If we don’t fix a defaced website in less than 1 hour then we do it for FREE!. Luckily for us we are very good at fixing sites fast!
Leave A Comment