Your website is probably hosted for you by a web hosting provider, and this is a good thing because they’re very likely experts in running web servers and web hosting services like email and even virtual servers and more advanced hosting options. Many people who entrust their websites to a web host don’t think about what would happen if they were to suddenly lose access to the host or if the host suffers failures to hardware or software. Having a recovery solution for your website is incredibly important, and here’s why.
What Exactly is a Backup?
A backup is a redundant copy of your data. The most important word in that sentence is redundant. Backups are actually quite a complex subject, and it can take some time to truly understand how to create a strategy to protect yourself against data loss in a disaster. The best backup strategies involve multiple copies in different locations and at least one completely offline medium, like an external hard drive that is only connected for the purpose of performing a backup. If you’re not familiar with correct backup techniques, you might want to leave it to a professional service to ensure that you always have your website performing optimally and can recover from any disasters.
Why Should You Back Up Your Website?
A backup can be crucial for many different reasons. If your web hosting company closes their doors without warning and you don’t have a chance to recover your files from their systems, or if they suffer a critical failure to their infrastructure like a flood or a fire in their data centre and they don’t have a robust backup solution, you won’t know until it’s too late. You also might suffer from a hacked or exploited website that you’ll need to recover from a backup or perhaps an update to your CMS or systems might cause something to go wrong. You’ll need a backup to restore a working copy of your website as soon and as quickly as possible to ensure continuity in your online presence. A backup is the only way to ensure this can be done.
How to Back Up Your Website
There are so many different ways you can perform backups and there are many different choices of where you can store them. Provided your backup solution is creating a complete and redundant copy of your website, you have some form of backup in place. Some CMS systems like WordPress have plugins that will assist with a backup to a cloud storage provider, while some web hosting companies might have an option in your hosting panel to perform backups of your website. Others might have a service where they charge a bit extra and take care of your backups for you.
Your website backup solution should be catered to your specific needs, but any backup solution is better than none. If you’re not running some form of backup, you might be risking a loss of your entire website without any way of recovering it, and that is sure to be a disaster!
