An important part of site maintenance that rarely gets discussed is the need to regularly backup your website. Even if you have unlimited web hosting on the most secure server there may be a time when your website needs to be rolled back to an earlier version. Without a recent backup, you could end up losing a lot of valuable content and need to rebuild it from scratch.
In this article, we’re going to talk about why regular website backups are so important:
What is a website backup?
Simply put, a website backup is a digital copy of all your website’s most important and up to date files that can be used in an emergency to recover your site should anything happen to it.
As part of your hosting plan with NetNerd, daily backups are taken and held on the server. Should you need them, they can be easily accessed through your cPanel. You may also decide to take a manual backup and keep it on your computer or save a copy to an external device such as a memory stick.
Now that we know what a website backup is, let’s discuss why you need one:
User error
While the internet is awash with horror stories about hackers, malware, and DDOS attacks, one of the most common causes of website failure is human error. Deleting the wrong file, installing the wrong extension, adding conflicting plugins, or entering faulty code can all damage your site if you’re not careful. With a recent backup, you can reset things to where they were before the error occurred.
Malicious attack
Of course, that’s not to say that hackers don’t exist. Most of them use automated programs that attempt to access your site thousands of times per minute. If your site is hacked, not only will you need to update your security provisions, you should also restore a clean version of your site from a backup to ensure any lingering threat is removed.
Viruses
Malware and other viruses can infect your server without you even noticing them. Once they are settled in your code, they start corrupting your data slowly over time until the whole site fails to work. Often the only way to ensure the virus is eradicated is to restore the site using your backup.
Updates
It might seem counter-intuitive, but sometimes server and Content Management System (CMS) updates are released to implement new features that might make your site unusable. This is often because certain types of file currently on your site are using outdated technology that is no longer compatible with the update. In this case, having a backup means you can roll the site back to a stable version until your developer can make the required changes to bring your website up to date.
At NetNerd, we include daily backups with all our unlimited web hosting packages, providing additional peace of mind for your business. View our hosting package pages for more information and buy online today for quick and easy set up.
