If you have a successful website, you know how important the actual content is. Without content, there is nothing for your visitors to see. It is wise to back your site up regularly. Backing up your website data and structure is just as important as backing up your personal files. If you don’t, you could see your entire website go up in smoke.
Don’t just have one version of your site copied. Have different iterations of your site from different time frames. You may find yourself looking for a specific article or photo you removed or page setup you particularly liked. If you don’t have older copies of your site, you won’t be able to get previous content that you may need in the future. A mind can be changed as often as websites are. You may suddenly hate your site’s new style and want to revert to a setup you used to have before
Have your site backed up in several different locations. Hard drives crash, media cards get lost, houses burn down, and hosting providers sometime go down forever. If you make sure to have physical copies of your site in different mediums, spread out over many locations, you will always have a copy. Don’t just use hard drives. Use CD and DVDs, USB sticks, memory cards, and the like. Keep private backups on your server and opt in to a reputable online backup website so you have online backups as well.
When choosing a host, check to make sure that they give you an option to create backups on their site as well. They should have a high quality solution for making easy, instant backups. Avoid fly by night companies as they can put your information in danger. If they are prone to outages or denial of service attacks, they are not right for you.
The htacess file is a greatly underappreciated piece of your website. If you make any mistakes on it, your site may become completely inaccessible to your users. If the htaccess file has incorrect permissions, images and files can suddenly be unavailable. Every time you complete an edit, make a copy of the file with the date and time you changed it. It could be a real life saver later.
Backups are only as good as their labels. If you don’t name them appropriately, you won’t be able to find what you need later. You may also accidentally overwrite important files if they have the exact same name. Putting a date and time is a good naming convention as well as adding sequential numbers. You can also add a note mentioning what has been changed if you would like to be thorough.
Websites are the life blood of the Internet. Yet every day, priceless websites go down and disappear forever. Even if your website is just invaluable to you, it is imperative that you keep a copy of your site if you want it to last. Be prepared for the unexpected.