Do you have a backup of your website files? If your website goes down and the hosting company cannot bring it back up, will you be in deep trouble? While most hosting companies back up their servers regularly, it\u2019s still a good idea to back up your files. If you own an e-commerce site, you especially should back up often, since your hosting company\u2019s backup may be several days old, and you risk losing all of your more recent transactions.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d recommend taking it upon yourself to do the backups rather than putting all of your faith in someone else. With a proper backup, in the event of natural disaster, server trouble, disgruntled employee, or any other problem, you can have your site back up in minutes instead of waiting precious days or weeks, or worse – losing data without ever recovering it.<\/p>\n
In order to backup your website files, you will need an FTP<\/strong> program (FTP<\/strong> stands for File Transfer Protocol<\/strong>). You can find a good FTP program online, usually with a free trial period, and not expensive to purchase.<\/p>\n As with regular computer backups, you should keep a copy off-site as well. If your site doesn\u2019t change often, then I\u2019d back it up monthly, and then again every time you update any of your pages. If it is updated regularly, then daily or weekly updates are in order.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also a good idea to keep multiple backups done on different dates \u2013 this way if something goes wrong with a back-up, you can revert to the next most recent backup and likely find the files you need there. Remember to check and test your backups and make sure everything is actually there!<\/p>\n E-commerce sites or other sites that use a database: I\u2019ve seen firsthand how people have lost their entire website, and thousands of dollars in business, due to some natural disaster or server\/computer failure. Perform a backup regularly and save yourself the grief, and your site will be back up in minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Do you have a backup of your website files? If your website goes down and the hosting company cannot bring it back up, will you be in deep trouble? While most hosting companies back up their servers regularly, it\u2019s still a good idea to back up your files. If you own an e-commerce site, you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-web-design"],"yoast_head":"\n
\n<\/strong>E-commerce sites that receive orders daily should be backed up daily. Also, if you have an e-commerce or other site that uses a database, you need to back up the database as well. Ask your hosting company for the url to access the database, as well as the username and passcode. You will need to export the database. Here too, I recommend having several versions saved by date, not just one backup. If the most recent one fails for some reason, you can revert to the next most recent.<\/p>\n