We spoke to Matt Powell, Editor of Broadband Genie about useful tips and tricks on how to keep your site securely backed up. If you put your heart and soul into building your website or your company’s reputation depends upon having a secure reliable website, you need to back it up. That’s where offsite backups come into play.
We are now accustomed to backing up our documents at work and making backups of important files at home yet that doesn’t seem to translate to our websites. You would be amazed at how few people have secure website backups. You really don’t want to be one of them.
Websites are now an intrinsic part of our lives whether you are blogging about your hobbies or running an eCommerce site. Without a website, your business may as well not exist. Even if you don’t run a business, having invested hours, days or weeks into a project for it all to disappear in an instant is as frustrating as it gets.
Why you need to back up your website
Do you remember the 123-reg site deletion debacle from 2016? Thousands of customers lost their websites and access to emails thanks to a simple script error during a housekeeping exercise.
While the majority of customers got their website back, not everyone did and the downtime stretched to weeks for some. Aside from negligence from your web host, there are several other reasons to back up your work. They include:
- Hacks and Malware
- Problematic Updates
- Human Error
- Peace of Mind
The one thing to remember is that it is your responsibility to back up your website, not your web host.
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So, you now know why you need to back up your website, let us discuss the how.
A secure backup is only effective if there is more than one copy and one of those is stored away from your web host. Then, come what may, you will have one accessible backup to hand. Most web hosts offer backup facilities as part of the package. It makes sense to use it and set the schedule to one that works for you. If you update your site often, back it up often. If it is more of a static site, perform a backup every time you update it.
You have four main options to generate secure backups:
- Use your web hosting provider’s solution
- Download a copy of your offsite backups to your computer
- Manually FTP files from your home directory onto your computer
- Use a third-party app to do the same
You can also back up to the cloud as well if you like. Some third-party backup plugins for WordPress will do this automatically for you. If you use a CMS like WordPress, make sure the backup option you choose will back up the database of the site as well as the core files. The database is key in being able to reconstruct your website should anything go wrong.
The main takeaway from this article has to be that anyone who runs a website needs to protect their investment. Thinking about backing up your website is not enough. You have to do it and do it now if your site is to be truly secure!
