You must have heard a lot of talks about the importance of taking a backup of the contents of your hard drive, just in case something should happen to your computer. There are few things more painful than knowing that all of your precious files have been lost forever. The same holds true for websites. It seems like every day there is a new headline about the latest high profile website crash and server outage. Unfortunately, website and server threats are very real. Backing up your website helps you to safeguard against those threats and data loss. It is strongly recommended you take a backup of the contents of your website every time there is an enhancement to the contents of your website. Find below, five main reasons why a backup of the content of your website is important.
1. Website Hackers
Unfortunately, hackers and scammers have become commonplace on the web. While the aim of hackers and scammers may be to steal credit card numbers and other sensitive information, often people hack websites merely to prove themselves, deface websites or just to cause trouble. For every online website, there is always the chance that it may become compromised. For every compromise, you might wish to restore the last backup as it might be a safer restore option.
2. Computer Catastrophes
Storing a copy of your files on your computer is a good idea, but should your machine crash, get lost, or fall off a cliff, then your files will be gone with it. Backing up your files remotely is a more practical option in the event that something happens to your machine.
3. Updates Gone Wrong
Regular updates refer to updated features and increased security, but they don’t always go as planned. This is why WordPress always tells you to perform a backup before carrying out any system update. Websites have multiple components, including plugins, themes, software, and back-end programming. An awry update to any of these can take an entire website offline for any amount of time.
4. Employee Errors/Mistakes
The truth is that people make mistakes and can make mistakes. It’s perfectly possible that an employee or contractor might click a wrong button or delete a necessary file by accident. When you backup your files, there’s less chance that human error will mess up your operations.
5. Minimize the Damage
Say you log onto your website one day, only to be greeted with an unfamiliar error page. You try again and again, but it still doesn’t come up. You get a sinking feeling in your stomach as you realize that something has gone wrong. You could either a) Go into an all out panic as you try to figure out what went wrong, and whether or not you’ve lost all of your precious content, or b) Become a bit annoyed that you may have to spend some time reloading your website, but you won’t have reason to go into an anxious tailspin.
It is advised that you backup the contents of your website after every enhancement, using the grandfather-father-son method. The backup files must be the same as you never know the crucial day/date when the backup files would prove to be a life-saver.