Everyone knows how important it is to backup your computer or hard drive, there are few things more painful than knowing that all of your precious files have been lost forever. The same holds true for your website. Many times small businesses think that backing up a site will be too time consuming or costly. In reality, If something goes wrong with your site, you could lose everything and end up spending more time and money trying to restore it.
- Hosting Backups can be Painful
I recently had a client who came to me after GoDaddy deleted her account and along with it, her entire Wordpress site. Like most hosting companies, GoDaddy had a backup of her website, but they charged her $150 to restore it and it took 2 days. A few days is a long time and depending on the website, can mean the loss of business and money. This client has since opted for an additional backup process so that even if her entire account is deleted, she will still have her website and all it's contents.
Another client of mine receives hundreds of orders a day on their e-commerce website. Their hosting company also provides a backup of the site but it's taken every night. This means if they need to restore to the backup the hosting company has, they would loose all order information from the time the backup was taken to the time the site went down. This is why they also take a backup that is stored locally where they can choose what to restore and what not to without even getting the hosting company involved.
- Websites get Hacked
You don't have to be an e-commerce site to get hacked. WordPress is by far the most used content management system (CMS) out there which is why it's so frequently targeted by hackers. You may not even know that you have been hacked, hackers may simply overwrite one of your template files with their own code. This can give them access to private information on stored your site and can allow them to send thousands of Spam emails on your behalf. As a result, your website server will be blacklisted by Spam monitors and none of the emails you send from your websites will be received.
- We're Human, Mistakes Happen
It doesn't matter how experienced you are or how many times you have made changes on your site, mistakes happen. On my first week as an in-house designer, I deleted the entire 10,000 product website from existence. Don't worry, I was able to restore it before anyone noticed! It was a simple mistake where I clicked the wrong button and had an instant panic attack.
One place where I've seen mistakes happen time and time again is with spreadsheets. Many CMS such as Magento allow you to use spreadsheet to upload large database changes on their site. This can save so much time until someone makes a mistake on the spreadsheet. If you have a database backup or a copy of the original spreadsheet, it's not a problem to restore and then find the error.
- Servers Occasionally Break
No hosting company is perfect. In 2007, RackSpace's power went out when a truck crashed into their data center and backup generates failed. This may be a freak accented but it happened non-the-less. When something like this happens it's likely that you will be able to restore your website but you may have to restore from a few days earlier, causing you to loose day's worth of data.
It important to not put all your eggs in one basket so to speak. Have a copy of your site on a local server or drive and/or consider also storing with a cloud service. Many CMS like Wordpress and Magento offer back options that allow you to choose where your backup is stored, so having a alternative to your server is a great option.
It is important to back up your websites regularly. It will give you piece of mind that all your hard work will not vanish into thin air and can actually save you time, money and stress. If you are not sure if your website is being backed up, call your webmaster and ask. If you think your hosting company is backing up your site for you, make sure you know how often they are backing up and what the process is for restoring the site.