When did you do your last website backup?

Some people take for granted that things are taken care of for them. Kind of like a website backup. A lot of people that I have worked with take for granted that their website is on a server and the server is backed up.

In most cases this is correct. But unless specifically indicated, usually this backup isn’t available to the end user. It is in place for the hosting company to restore the entire server or accounts in the event of a catastrophic failure.

Most hosting companies have a service that their clients can utilize that will protect them. Without this type of service, it is typically the responsibility of the site owner to backup their own site.

A perfect example of this is GoDaddy (https://www.godaddy.com/hosting/web-hosting). All of their Linux hosting plans list “Site backup & restore”, but this is an additional feature and fee that needs to be added.

I know first hand that they don’t do this free of charge. A few months ago a mishap with a site hosted by GoDaddy resulted in the entire site being reset to a bad state. If the extra service had been purchased from GoDaddy, it would have been a point and click to restore the site. But without it, it was several hundred dollars and a few days of waiting for them to restore.

A select few Web hosts, such as Opie’s Computers, include this backup for free with their hosting. We want our customers to have the peace of mind of knowing that they don’t have to have one more thing on their already full plate to worry about.

But… If you aren’t hosting with us, there are still other options that you can use to backup your site.

If your hosting is utilizing cPanel, you have the site backup feature. This allows you to download a full site backup or select a previous site snapshot to download. This is a very handy feature that is built into cPanel.

If you don’t have cPanel, things get more complicated and add a few more steps, but aren’t impossible for the novice user. Using FTP, you can download your entire web home directory. If any of your sites utilize a database (like if it is built on WordPress), you’ll also need to backup that. That requires using the MySQL command line or much easier, use the phpmyadmin interface.

If you are using CMS (Content Management System) software on your website like WordPress (https://wordpress.org/) or Drupal (https://www.drupal.org/) there are plugins available that can backup the site and all associated databases much easier. At a later time I will go over options available for both…

Conclusion

Don’t assume that your website is protected just because it is hosted by a “big box host”. Do your homework and ensure that you know what is covered and what else you need to do. If you aren’t sure, contact us to help you sort through the details!

photo credit: Secure Cloud Computing via photopin (license)