Your business website is more than a display of your products, services and operations. It is a vital resource and an enterprise asset, which stores critical information about your business, clients, users, and so on.
And it continues to grow as your business grows, exposing it to the risk of data loss caused by various factors like hacking, corrupt files, accidental deletion, etc. That is why you need to safeguard it using a backup.
A website backup is simply a protective mechanism to save your site’s content during data loss due to external threats or damages caused by natural disasters, technical failures, or thefts. Just like a website, follow this guide if you are interested in Android backup.
There are three ways to create your website backup:
1. Through your hosting provider
Your hosting solution provider plays a major role in creating a backup of your site’s resources. With Cloud Hosting, you can avail the option of automatic daily backup, which is one of the major reasons why this serves as an effective means of hosting a website. A managed hosting plan can help you save your time, effort and peace of mind, so you can focus on the other important business operations. The data duplication mechanism in cloud hosting creates multiple versions of your resources, thus increasing redundancy. So, in case of any uncalled-for situation, your database, user information, and mailboxes are safe and your site functions smoothly.
2. Manual Backups
Performing manual backups can seem a bit complicated but it can be done with ease. All you need is direct access to the web server, via FTP or a hosting account file manager. To backup your website database, using management tools such as phpMyAdmin is very efficient. If your hosting provider gives phpMyAdmin in cPanel, access the tool and use the quick export method from the Export tab. You can read about manual backups in this detailed post here.
3. Using a backup plugin
If you want to manage your website backup yourself, then it is recommended to opt for a plugin (in case of WordPress websites), designed to do so. WordPress sites come with an array of plugins that allows you to create regular backups of site data, applications, and other resources. With such plugins pre-installed on your site, you can set a backup schedule, choose what to save, and control the frequency of data backup thereby making it a flexible option.
How can you use backup effectively?
As much as investing in a backup mechanism is essential, it is also important for website owners to know how to make this system effective and use the saved data.
● You can use the backed-up information for restoring your site data during any 360-degree upgrade or in case of data loss from hacking, theft or hardware malfunctions.
● Pay attention to your backup frequency. There is no perfect schedule for backing up your site and its frequency depends on how often your site data changes. If you are a social media platform, or a site sharing viral content, then maybe you need a daily backup mechanism, so that there is no risk of any data loss at any given point of time. On the other hand, if your site has fewer users and uses static content, then a weekly backup might work for you.
● You should store your backed-up data using multiple copies. Consider the popular ‘Rule of three’ method, to store your information on your local machine, a portable device, and cloud storage. This will allow you easy and quick access to your site information and resources whenever you need.
Backups is one of the most important thing while managing your website. That is why there are website backup mechanisms that can help you save your site from losing vital information and continue to function normally, despite any mishaps. Do let us know about the tools that you use for backups in the comment section below.
