The digital landscape has become an integral part of our lives, from online commerce to a way of showing the world about yourself through your digital business card, and often an important revenue generator. Whether you are a small business owner, blogger, or a multinational corporation, your website will serve you as an effective tool to reach your customers, build your brand awareness, and sell more to them.
Given its significance, it is important that your website be protected against any potential attacks. A cyberattack, accidental deletion, hardware failure, or a natural disaster can take away your online presence, and data may be lost in an extremely devastating manner. Hence, to prevent this and for business continuity, a robust backup strategy should be in place.
Why Back Up Your Website?
Before we go to the how-to, let’s understand the why. Here are some compelling reasons to back up your website:
Data Loss Prevention:
- Accidental deletions are so common nowadays due to human errors, software bugs, or system malfunctions. A robust backup system helps you recover lost files and data, minimising downtime and potential financial losses.
- Hardware failures: your hard drive can crash or server malfunction and deny people access to your website. Regular backups allow you to restore your website from a particular point in time.
- Software failures and updates might cause unpredictable data corruption or loss. Regular backups allow you to quickly recover your website to a stable point.
Cyberattacks:
- You can’t stay ahead of changing cybercriminal tactics. Hackers can easily access your website unauthorised by finding a weakness within the software or infrastructure running your website.
- They can steal such sensitive information as customer information, financial records, and intellectual property. They will also encrypt your data, blocking access to it until you have paid the ransom.
- At the worst, hackers can even delete your whole website, leaving you with nothing to regain your information or retrieve your online existence.
Restoration of Your Website:
- A loss of website functionality can bring a huge knock to your business in the form of lost revenue and lost reputation. You can easily regain your website by the current backup, which minimises your downtime.
- With regular backups, you will be able to recover your website to a previous working state, and thus ensure that your customers can continue accessing your services and products.
Disaster Recovery:
- Natural disasters destroy much of the infrastructure, such as data centres and servers. With off-site backups, you will be able to protect your website from physical destruction, thus ensuring business continuity.
- Cloud-based backup solutions are so great for disaster recovery: it will back up your site on different locations, so losing your data is minimal or almost impossible.
How to back up Your Website: Step-By-Step
Several ways can back up a website. Each of those has pros and cons, and which method to use depend on personal preference. Of course, we’re tackling the most common: Manual and Automated Backups.
Manual Backups
While manual backups give you the most amount of control, they require a lot of time and are prone to human errors. Here is how to do a manual backup.
1. Using an FTP Client:
- Select the FTP Client: Download and install an FTP client, such as FileZilla or Cyberduck.
- Connect to Your Server: Enter the FTP details for your hosting provider (host, username, password, and port number).
- Download Website Files: Choose all files and folders in your website’s root directory and download them to your computer.
2. Backup Your Database:
- Access Your Hosting Control Panel: Log into your hosting account’s control panel (e.g., cPanel).
- Use the Database Backup Tool: Find the “phpMyAdmin” or “MySQL Database Backup” tool.
- Select Your Database: Select the database for your website.
- Export the Database: Click the “Export” button and follow the on-screen instructions.
Automated Backups
Automated backups are more efficient and reliable. They can be scheduled to run regularly, ensuring that your website is always protected. Here are a few methods for automated backups:
1. Hosting Provider’s Backup Solution:
∙ Check Your Hosting Plan: Many hosting providers offer built-in backup solutions as part of their plans.
∙ Configure Backup Settings: Login to your hosting control panel and configure the backup frequency and retention period.
2. Backup Plugin:
∙ Install a Plugin: If you use WordPress, install a reliable backup plugin, such as UpdraftPlus or BackupBuddy.
∙ Configure Backup Settings: Configure the backup schedule, storage destination (local or remote), and other options.
3. Third-Party Backup Services:
∙ Select a Service: Look for reputable third-party backup services like Backblaze or Carbonite.
∙ Setup Backup: Use the provider’s guidelines to connect your website and configure backup settings.
Best Practices for the Website Backups
To have an effective backup strategy, here are some best practices:
Regular Backups:
- Frequency: Schedule regular backups daily or weekly based on how frequently changes are made on your website.
- Incremental Backup: Take incremental backup of only the changes done from the last full backup, as it saves space and time on storage.
Multiple Backups:
- Local Backup: Store a copy of your backup on local computer or external hard disk.
- Remote Backup: Transfer the same to a remote server or cloud storage provider as in case of local disasters.
- Have more than one location in which you store data: this reduces the probability of data loss even further
Test Your Backups
- Test Restore a regular backup to a test environment where you check its integrity as well as its ability to restore it
- Run some simulation disaster recovery drills with which you will be in a position to know if you will encounter problems: in case you find, then improve your recovery process.
Protect Your Backups
- Strong passwords for those who use unique ones while creating strong passwords to store backup files and storage accounts.
- Encryption: Encrypt your backup files, so sensitive data cannot be seen by unauthorised access.
- Secure Storage: Use a reputable and secure provider of storage, boasting appropriate security measures.
Update your Backups:
- Post-Change Backup: Make a fresh version after making some large website changes, such as rolling out a new feature or your redesign.
- Version Control: Keep tabs on the changes that get done to your code-base by using version control programs like Git. This has you easily revert to one of the previous versions.
Review and Refresh Your Strategy:
- Regular Review: Periodically review your backup strategy in order to ensure that the strategy remains relevant and matches your changing needs.
- Security Updates: Stay updated on the best practices in security to safeguard the backups from cyber threats
- Technological Advances: Leverage newly available technologies and tools which enhance your backup process to include cloud-based backup solution and automated backup scripts.
These best practices can greatly reduce data loss and ensure the continuity of your website.
Conclusion
In this ever-changing digital world, with threats of cyberattacks, accidental deletions, and hardware failures, a website backup strategy is no longer a luxury but a necessity. Backing up your website means more than protecting your digital assets; it’s actually ensuring the integrity of the ground you’re standing on-the very basis of your online presence.
Remember, the perfect backup plan is layered with different manual and automated techniques tailored for your needs. Being a professional web developer or just an amateur blogger, one has to know well the finer points of various backup techniques.
With this guide and best practices, you will be able to minimise the risk and chances of failure to a minimum to ensure continuity in your website. Don’t let unforeseen circumstances get the best out of your online ventures. Protect that digital investment of yours proactively.
In conclusion, a sound backup strategy is the right basis for website security and resiliency. Placing frequent backups at the head of priorities, testing recovery procedures, and staying informed with new security best practices are ways one would keep his website safe and rest better at night.
