Tips for backing up your Online World
Keep your face always toward the sunshine – and shadows will fall behind you.
~ Walt Whitman
Technology isn’t always 100% reliable so it is always important to have a back-up plan for your content so if the worst case scenario happens, you’re prepared.
Tips for keeping your content secure so a site crash doesn’t crash your business:
1) Don’t write your content live on your website.
You don’t want your website to be the only place you have your content and blogs stored in their final version. If anything happens to your theme, or your hosting company, there is the potential that you could lose everything, or at the very least your latest edits.
2) Store things in different places.
Make sure you have multiple copies of your content saved in various formats (this tip goes for pretty much everything). Create a copy of your content and save it in at least two places – one online (cloud-based) and one offline (hard-drive, flash-drive etc). This way if the worst happens and your site crashes AND you lose your computer, or your site crashes AND you lose access to your online storage, you still have access to your content and can get your site back online quickly.
3) Back-up Services
There are also plug-ins (additional software) that can be added to your website that will back-up the content of your site at pre-determined times to a location of your choosing. This means that you will have the most recent version of your website saved in a version that can be reloaded online with minimal editing to restore the site.
The program that I use for my sites is called Backup Buddy
Here is also a list of some Free/Low cost back up options although I don’t have experience with them personally http://appointzilla.com/5-free-alternatives-to-backupbuddy/
The moral of the story here is better safe than sorry. It is hard to create a website the first time round. It is incredibly frustrating if your website goes down. You don’t want to go through the pain of starting a square one if the worst case scenario happens. With proper back up, a crashed site downgrades from disaster to annoyance.