If you own a website, then no doubt you will have put a lot of time and effort into its design or alternatively spent a lot of money on outsourcing the design. Owning a website can feel a bit like being a proud parent as you revel in people's reactions to it and take great pleasure in each new update and e-mail you receive in response.
As such then it can be almost heart breaking to lose all that good work and to see your site undone - particularly if that damage was malicious and intentional. As such then, it's crucial to do everything you possibly can to protect your site and to avoid such catastrophes.
This means tightening security and choosing secure passwords yes, but it also means backing up all your hard work so that if you should lose your site, you'll at least be able to get it back. Here we will look at how to do that systematically and efficiently.
Keeping an Up-to-Date Copy
The most effective way to keep a back up of your site is to edit offline and to then just upload the new pages from your computer when they're ready. Create a folder on your desktop with the same name as your website and containing all of the relevant files, and then just test out your changes there before dragging the files onto your host through your FTP client.
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| Image licensed Under Attribution |
This makes a lot of sense and is an easy way to back-up your site if you're editing it yourself in HTML. However if you are maintaining a WordPress blog, or using another content management system/outsourced design, then you are going to need to find ways to edit your back up your site as you go.
The best way to do this is to simply make a conscious effort to back up each page and each image every time you upload them. Simply make your edits through WordPress and then copy all the files into a folder at home once you get back.
The Vault
It's also worth keeping at least one more copy of your site in case you should lose the files online and those on your computer. While having an up-to-date copy of your site is a good way to avoid having to redo anything, it's really the backlog of text, images and design itself you will most want to protect.
As such then you should also set a routine to backup your files in at least one other place every few months. This can mean storing them using online file backup services, or it can mean keeping them on a portable hard drive somewhere in your home or even just an old computer (which can be simply a matter of downloading them on that PC from your FTP as well).
And better yet? Give the files to someone else. If you collaborated on the site with anyone, then make sure they have a copy of the site as well and that way you'll have protect your site even from yourself...
Estelle HinesAbout the Guest Author:
Many thanks to Estelle Hines and 2MHost for this delightful post. She enjoys writing post related to SEO, marketing, web designing and web hosting. To know more about 2MHost and their cheap hosting services, visit their website.
