Matthew Gates http://notetoservices.com 4m 1,100 #donttrustwebhost
The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.
Backup Your Data Everyday
A decade ago, if you asked me what I would be doing for a living, I most certainly would have never told you that I would be making a living from designing and developing websites. As a child, I did not grow up dreaming that I would be building websites for a living. Hell, my major had nothing to do with web design and I never took a course in any type of web design class, except for a Python programming class, so I could get out of taking a mathematics requirement. The Internet and websites were the furthest thing from my mind, but it has become my living, my job, my career, and my life, and I love it.
It is all too easy to take it all for granted, as anyone could easily become a web designer or a web developer. Many web hosts have made that very possible nowadays with one-click solutions and especially with WordPress being one of the most widely used platforms that is easy to install, easy to learn, easy to setup, and easy to use. It is very easy to get into the habit of believing everything runs smoothly and that there is nothing to worry about. Most web hosts are actually pretty good at making sure there are no problems and that your data is actually backed up, but there are those rare moments, where nothing is actually backed up, and your data is lost, and by data loss means that your website is gone, without a trace.
Your host has no backup and is all too eager to point out the fact that you should have backed up your data, even though you could have sworn that was a feature you thought you were paying for all these months since you went with their hosting plan, but unfortunately, something did not go right, and someone did not do their job, so while hosting companies claim they make backups of your website, it is best to not trust them right from the start.
I hate to say that. Sign up with whoever you choose to host with but don’t trust them, but go read the bad reviews for many hosts and you will find a common theme that usually falls into the realm of some hacked website or data loss without any data backups. Happy customers with good reviews are the ones who usually never have issues and are the ones who might have had issues, but the hosting company actually did what they said they do and actually made a daily backup of the site.
Hosts that usually make these backups specialize in WordPress websites, such as WP Engine, and you certainly pay good money for this service for them to take care of your website, so if you want to be protected, it is recommended you pay the extra money for that protection and confidence in knowing that your host actually backed up your website.
If you cannot afford that extra service and need to go with a more affordable service, than you can always go with a service like DreamHost and set up DreamObjects and DreamSpeed CDN, purchase BackUpWordPress’s DreamObjects, set it up for automatic backups, and have the confidence to know that your website is backed up to a CDN on a daily basis, however many backups you choose, for as long as you want. If you asked me when I first began a website whether a CDN was worth it or not, I would have told you not to invest in it at all. Many web developers, website owners, and website operators still think it is a waste of money. My mind has completely changed now and I even wrote an article on Reasons Why I Use A CDN and feel it is worth it for the peace of mind that your data is safe.
When I read horror stories, such as Google deletes artist’s blog and a decade of his work along with it, and there are plenty of other stories similar to this one of blogs or websites getting removed without a trace, and no backup for recovery, and the site owner is at a loss with nothing to show for it, and no one to even claim responsibility or bother to help out. The Internet Archive and Google cache might help you to retrieve some of the webpages off your website, but the process of recovery is a lot harder that way. It is simply best not to trust your host and to take a pro-active stance of making backups of your own website. If your host has copies, great, but you should probably never rely on your host to do anything but the hosting for your website.
There are plenty of backup plugins out there that will automatically do everything for you and whatever price you pay, free or not, is worth every penny. If you have a recent backup of your website, than restoring and fixing your website could be as simple as a click of a button and a restoration of your entire website within 5 minutes. Without a backup, you could spend hours to days with a website that is down. If you are in the business of making money, you already know that a website that is down is losing money. Even if your website is not a money maker, you are losing potential visitors for every second that your website is not up.
Making a daily backup of your website at least once a day, especially if your website is updated everyday, is necessary. Storing all of your files on a CDN will also give you the peace of mind for when and if your website is hacked, your files cannot actually be deleted or lost, because they were never actually on your website in the first place. Do yourself a favor and don’t trust your host at all to do any backup work for you.
They are your web host, not your backup host. Do not rely on your host for anything but hosting the files of your website and display them. Backing up your website should be a part of setting up your website. Take a few minutes to find a good plugin, set it up, and make daily backups. In addition, practice at least once restoring your website, just in case, so that you will have no surprises or errors, and can get your website back up within seconds to minutes if you ever need to restore it from a backup.
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