Web hosts are not always reliable. If your hosting company were to tell you they lost all your website’s data, would you be prepared with a backup to replace it? I’ve seen it happen unfortunately and want to help you be more prepared if the situation were to happen to you.
You’ve spent thousands building and perfecting your website… the small amount it costs to protect your investment is well worth it. Just like purchasing car or home insurance. It is especially important if your website is your main source of leads and new business.
Let’s review some of the different options available to you to automatically backup your website on a regular basis.
ExpressionEngine Backup Solutions
Safe Harbor
Safe Harbor creates daily backups of your entire website and database. This add-on offers multiple options for storing the backup files including: on the server of your choice, their servers or Amazon S3 (which we’ll discuss later in this article).
A new feature they added recently is the ability to search for a specific file in any backup and download it without having to download the full file set.
Backup Pro
Backup Pro is another solution that also creates daily backups of both your website and database. It offers additional features such as additional remote storage solutions including support for both Amazon S3 and Rackspace Cloud.
Both solutions will notify you by email when a backup has been created and will also delete older backups when the space you allocate for backups is full (so you aren’t paying to backup files you’ll never restore).
WordPress Backup Solutions
VaultPress
VaultPress is subscription backup service run by the same folks that bring you WordPress. Depending on your subscription, you can sign-up for daily backups or as you make changes to your site. If you are blogging or adding new content daily or more I would highly recommend backing up your data as it changes to make sure you don’t lose even a day’s worth of content.
VaultPress plans can go as far as alerting you to potential security threats… WordPress is the most widely used content management system on the market, so an extra level of security couldn’t hurt!
If it’s worth creating, it’s worth protecting.
BackupBuddy
BackupBuddy is another WordPress solution that includes many more options for remote backup storage such as Dropbox, Rackspace and Amazon S3. You can schedule backups to occur at specific times and days and also be a little more specific as to the types of files you are backing up or excluding from backup. If you’re looking for more robust options, BackupBuddy might be right for you.
Backing up Data to the Cloud
Once you have an automated backup system in place you may want to also consider backing up your data to a cloud service such as Amazon S3. If anything happens to your web server and you’re backing up your files on the same server you could find yourself back at square one, without a backup or website. At the very least you want to make sure the service you’ve selected stores your backups on their servers, not yours.
Setting up an account with Amazon Web Services is a smart idea to make sure your backups are backed up! It’s always a good plan to have backups stored in more than one place to ensure the security of your data.
Need Help Setting up a Backup Solution?
Contact Sarah Lynn Design today and we’ll make sure you have a solution in place to protect your business investment.
