Why do I need to backup my website?
It’s 7:00 am in the morning and you decide to power up your laptop and check out the latest activity on your website. You punch the URL into the browser and nothing. Your site is gone. Worse, you stumble across a website that doesn’t even look like yours. It’s been hacked and now your phone starts ringing off the hook because customers can’t access the things they need to off of your website. What do you do? If you have a backup of your website, breath! With a backup, you can safely get your site up and be running in no time, provided you grabbed the right files and database tables. But how do you know if you backed your website up properly?
No worries, you can safely get your site up and be running in no time, provided you grabbed the right files and database tables. But did you? How can you be sure you really have everything needed to restore your website if a catastrophic event occurred?
Hopefully, we can help make this process an incredibly easy and painless one for you.
Get the tools!
If you are not already backing up your WordPress or Joomla website, you can do so at no cost to you.
Head on over to Akeeba and download the appropriate plugin/component for your CMS. Akeeba is by far one of the best backup/restore/migrate site plugins I’ve ever seen, and I’ve tested quite a few. For being free this thing is loaded with features!
- Include/Exclude Files
- Include/Exclude Directories
- Include/Exclude Database tables
- Create profiles to allow different types of backups.
- Example: Just backup the database or files.
- On-demand backups
- Simple site migration with Akeeba Kickstart
Ok, so how often should I backup my website?
That’s a great question! If your site is not generating a lot of new content and you only push out a new post once per month, then back it up on a monthly basis. On the flip, if you are pushing out new content daily, I highly recommend using this method:
- Before updating or installing any plugins, backup your website.
- Before posting any new content, backup.
- After updating or installing any plugins, backup.
- After posting any new content, backup.
Why so much!?
If you don’t backup your website before you update or install new plugins or publish a new post, and something goes drastically wrong, you have nothing to fall back on. It’s always a good idea to have an insurance policy on hand for when something is about to hit the fan. If it doesn’t break, perfect! Nothing loss. If it does, you will be glad you spent the extra time getting that backup.
If you don’t backup your website after you update the site and push out new content you risk losing those changes if someone hacks in and really messes up the site.
Ok, wouldn’t it make more sense to hire someone to do this for me?
Yes, and no.
Hiring someone to do this cost money. If you are strapped for cash, you can do this yourself. It just takes time and dedication on your behalf to implement and maintain this.
If you don’t have the time or don’t trust yourself enough with this process, please contact us today and we will be glad to sit down with you and discuss which Maintenance Plan would work best to meet your needs. We’ve successfully backed up, restored, and migrated hundreds of sites. You will be in good hands.