Hostlumina
Active Member
Hey there!
How are you? Oops.... you just spilled coffee over your laptop and your hear some crackling followed by smoke.. Oh oh.... Computer might be fried... Not a problem, take out the hard drive and connect it to another computer or external adapter. SHOOT!!!! My hard drive is pooched, 3 years worth of data gone!!!!
Yep, this can happen to any individual and/or business at any given moment. This is why it's very important to always create a backup plan for yourself for all your web files.
Your backup plans should be based on how important your data is and you should have it stored in different devices if possible. If your web host offers back ups offsite that is GREAT!!! however, don't depend on it and always have a third resource just in case of a worse case scenario.
Back to the plan, what should it consist of? Well, there are couple of items to consider that you can also apply to your personal data at home.
- Are you going to go with an automatic (cron, additional software, etc...) or manually process the backup and if so how will you remind yourself of this task in a weekly daily, or monthly basis?
- Offsite (back up storage will need to be purchase or a small VPS) or downloading the backup to your home or office (usually depends on size and your b/w allowance per ISP).
- If downloading to home or office where and how many copies will you be planning to keep?
- Frequency of making the backups either daily, weekly, or monthly.
- Choose a time to do it. When choosing a time you might want to check with your host. Some only allow specific window times and most importantly your lowest traffic time to keep peak performance.
- How long do you want to keep the backups for or are required to keep by law (depending on business + data type)
- Lastly, always make an immediate back up prior and after making any changes to your site.
Personal recommendations on how often you should backup.
Daily to several times a day backups - Crucial sites where content is constantly changing (by the minute, hourly, or couple times a day) such as eCommerce site, blog, forum, database, CRM, etc... This obviously will depend on the size of the business, community, etc...
Weekly backups - For dynamic or static sites where data changes once or twice a week. example - a blog where you post once a week with no comments or very minimal comments or a html site that you update weekly.
Monthly backups - Static web sites that you make changes to once or every other couple months.
**Immediate Backups - This is very important that I find people forget. Always back up prior a change and after a change you make (i.e. script update, code modification, installing add-on, etc...)
Has disaster ever struck you before? What changes have you done since that you can share with the rest to help create and improve current backup plans?
How are you? Oops.... you just spilled coffee over your laptop and your hear some crackling followed by smoke.. Oh oh.... Computer might be fried... Not a problem, take out the hard drive and connect it to another computer or external adapter. SHOOT!!!! My hard drive is pooched, 3 years worth of data gone!!!!
Yep, this can happen to any individual and/or business at any given moment. This is why it's very important to always create a backup plan for yourself for all your web files.
Your backup plans should be based on how important your data is and you should have it stored in different devices if possible. If your web host offers back ups offsite that is GREAT!!! however, don't depend on it and always have a third resource just in case of a worse case scenario.
Back to the plan, what should it consist of? Well, there are couple of items to consider that you can also apply to your personal data at home.
- Are you going to go with an automatic (cron, additional software, etc...) or manually process the backup and if so how will you remind yourself of this task in a weekly daily, or monthly basis?
- Offsite (back up storage will need to be purchase or a small VPS) or downloading the backup to your home or office (usually depends on size and your b/w allowance per ISP).
- If downloading to home or office where and how many copies will you be planning to keep?
- Frequency of making the backups either daily, weekly, or monthly.
- Choose a time to do it. When choosing a time you might want to check with your host. Some only allow specific window times and most importantly your lowest traffic time to keep peak performance.
- How long do you want to keep the backups for or are required to keep by law (depending on business + data type)
- Lastly, always make an immediate back up prior and after making any changes to your site.
Personal recommendations on how often you should backup.
Daily to several times a day backups - Crucial sites where content is constantly changing (by the minute, hourly, or couple times a day) such as eCommerce site, blog, forum, database, CRM, etc... This obviously will depend on the size of the business, community, etc...
Weekly backups - For dynamic or static sites where data changes once or twice a week. example - a blog where you post once a week with no comments or very minimal comments or a html site that you update weekly.
Monthly backups - Static web sites that you make changes to once or every other couple months.
**Immediate Backups - This is very important that I find people forget. Always back up prior a change and after a change you make (i.e. script update, code modification, installing add-on, etc...)
Has disaster ever struck you before? What changes have you done since that you can share with the rest to help create and improve current backup plans?