In the uncertain world of hosting, losing all your data is one of the biggest catastrophes you can face. One of the surest ways to counter this loss is to back up a website. A website backup can save your website in case of an emergency. But the process is not infallible as it still requires human intervention to back up the data. What happens in case the site admin forgets to take a backup?
The best way to overcome this problem is an automated website backup. A robust backup tool like CodeGuard Website Backup will back up your website automatically at regular and pre-set intervals. If you’re looking to secure your web hosting services against data loss, you should seriously consider backups as a reliable fallback.
So, this would prompt you to ask the question, how often should you backup your website?
- It depends on your website
The frequency of your website backups depends wholly upon the kind of data your website hosts. If your website publishes one new blog per week, and the rest of the information remains the same, one backup a week would probably be enough. If your website publishes a daily blog, then it would make sense to take more frequent backups.
- More backups mean more security
As a general rule, the more backups you take, the more secure your data stays. For a site which deals with crucial user data, like an eCommerce portal or one offering financial services, they generate lots of new data on a daily basis. A daily backup is a must for such websites to ensure full data integrity.
- Simply backing up is not important
Simply taking a backup is not enough to ensure that your data remains safe. It needs to be stored at a secure and remote location, away from the main server to keep it from being lost. At the same time, it should also be easy to retrieve and restore whenever it is needed in the time of an emergency, to get the website back up again without losing time.
- Regular maintenance is a must for integrity
When you take regular backups, you generate a lot of data which eats up space. Also, the sheer number of files may create a mess in the time of need. You will waste time in finding the latest, most relevant backup to restore. You need to carry out regular maintenance and clean out older files to ensure that they do not create confusion. Decide on a cut-off period, e.g. three months, and keep deleting the backup files before that period.
- Automating backups is the best solution
All the things that we just saw can be easily accomplished by automating your website backups. A powerful tool such as CodeGuard works in the following ways:
- Takes automatic backups
- Stores them at a remote location
- Has a simple retrieval and restoration process
- Cleans outdated backups
All you have to do is configure it once as per your preferences and let it do its work.
A backup is your last line of defence. If an attacker or malware gets past your security measures, you have to fall back on backups to save your website. So supplement your manual backup efforts with an automation tool like CodeGuard and seamlessly fortify your backup strategy.
If you are hosting your website on a VPS, check out the following video for a guide on backing up your VPS Hosting Server –
