So you have a website. Whether it’s a personal blog that only your mom reads, or it’s a business site that brings in hundreds of thousands of dollars each year, you want to protect your content.
While it would be great to say that technology has advanced to a point where we don’t need to worry about servers crashing and our digital footprint being erased, it just hasn’t. Sadly, there is always the possibility of having a website crash and a lot of hard work disappear forever.
So, how do you prevent that? You back up your website. What is a backup? It’s a copy of all code, database, content, images, and email settings on your site. It’s literally your entire site and what makes it work.
Now, a lot of people are small business owners, and if that’s you, then there’s a good chance that you are saying that your hosting service backs the website up for you. While that would be wonderful, you can’t be entirely sure about that, so why not be on the safe side and do it yourself as well?
The trick is successfully backing up your site is to come up with a plan of how to to it. That would look something like this:
● How often will you backup up your site? Daily, weekly, monthly? Have a set plan of how often you are going to back up your site and mark it on your calendar.
● What will you include in the backup? Some hosts give you the option to pick and choose what you want to backup. Maybe you want everything but the image files. This all depends on what you want to keep.
● How you will generate the backup (how does your service allow you to do this)? Now you need to figure out how to physically go into your settings and save (backup) your website.
● Where do you plan on storing your backup? Where are you going to keep this important information? On a hard drive? On your pc? Figure out a location where you will store your website.
● How will you restore your website in case of something happening to it? Now, if something DOES happen to your site, figure out a plan to get it back. How are you going to implement your back up and restore your website?
How you actually back up your website depends on the hosting service that you use and you will have to look into where you go to do that.
Whatever you do, don’t wait until something catastrophic has happened and it’s too late. Backup your site today!