Website Backups

The Importance of maintaining a backup for your website – monthly, weekly, daily

There is nothing more satisfying than achieving the height where your website is driving traffic and revenue for your business and generally giving you solid return on your investment. Unfortunately, there are many forces that constantly work against your site. They range from simple hard drive failures to malicious hackers. One of the best ways to show your website and visitors some love and also to sleep peacefully at night is to maintain a backup of your website. You have three options; daily, weekly or monthly website backups. Here are the key reasons why maintaining a backup for your website is crucial.

Respond quickly when hacked

The statistics on hacking are startling. The National Cyber Security Alliance determined that almost 20% of small businesses are compromised annually. Regardless of the many security measures you may add to protect your site, hacking is always a possibility. Hackers evolve with the trends and now take up the form of viruses and malware. Routine backups of your website will help recover hacked, lost or corrupted databases or files much faster. It is easier and much faster to delete all the affected files and rebuild your site from the backup.

Protect yourself against upgrade miseries

It is good to keep your CMS and all its plugins up-to-date. However, the upgrades may not always go smoothly. At times, third-party plugins may not be compatible with the new upgrade. Your custom settings may also cause the entire platform to collapse. A full backup gives you a great insurance policy in case any of these problems occur. Maintaining a website backup will help prevent data loss during upgrades.

Computer problems

It is good to store copies of your website files on your computer. However, should your computer crash, get stolen or fall off a cliff, your files will be lost. Backing up your files, remotely, gives you a practical option in the event of any of the aforementioned problems.

Human error

Humans make mistakes. It is possible for you, a contractor or an employee to click the wrong button and end up deleting all your website files by accident. The only way you will be able to get back on track fast is if you regularly backup your website files. It is better safe than sorry.

How to Back up Your Website

Start by finding out the website backup services your web host provides. If you did not design your website yourself, contact the person who designed it for you and ask him to back it up on your behalf. The person you contact should have adequate knowledge of CMS and should be able to back up all your files manually. It is wise to use an additional backup service in addition to that provided by your hosting company. It is also possible to compress the files and email them to yourself.

How often you backup your website will depend mostly on how often you update your content. To automate the process, install a backup plugin on your website. Most plugins will give you the option of scheduling your website backup and submitting the backups to cloud services.