Backing up your website regularly means that in the event of a site-wide disaster, you can easily get your site up and running by uploading/installing the last known working copy.
Now that all seems well and good and most of the time this is covered by your hosting company, perhaps for an added fee (we include backups in our hosting packages), However, if backups are NOT included here are a few tips that may prove useful…
*Please note, we would recommend that you consult with a web developer before making any changes as the best backup solution differs from business to business, website to website – we are available if you’d like a free consultation.
How often should you backup your site?
This depends on how active you are on your website.
Here’s a rough guide:
- Static, info sites without a blog: weekly or fortnightly would suffice
- Blogging platforms, depends how often you post, but we’d recommend daily.
- E-commerce sites, at the minimum daily, but every 12 hours or 6 hours would be ideal.
- Webapps: similar to e-commerce sites.
Best back tools on the web
It does widely depend on the software your website was built on.
For WordPress, there are many plugins that provide backups, we like to use: Updraft Plus or Backup Buddy.
As said above some hosts offer free (or paid) regular backup service, with our hosting packages, backups are included free of charge.
Other than that, you can just login via FTP (& PHPmyAdmin if your site has a database) and take a copy then there – although this can be quite time consuming and complex and we would not recommend as an on going solution
Where should you backup your site to?
Most backup tools will either backup to file (a local file to be saved on your device) or keep a copy within the website under a separate directory (in another folder).
This is OK, until your PC stops working or, if you can’t access your website, then you won’t be able to run a back up (if it’s saved within the site).
Where possible we would always recommend backing up to a third party cloud platform like One-drive, G-drive or Dropbox.
A few backups tools may offer this integration (for a fee) or you will likely need to contract a web developer.
We actively monitor and backup our clients websites which is included in our web management service
