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What Would You Lose if Your Website’s Host Server Failed?

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It’s a scary thought – and the more valuable your website is to you or your business, the scarier it can get!

Think about it, though. Say you’re in charge of blogging for your business (or you currently are your business and therefore in charge of everything under the sun)… You try to be consistent and you spend an average of half an hour writing a post each weekday, five posts per week.

A Not-too-bad Scenario

One day you get to work (or walk into your home office) and fire up a browser, go to login to WordPress and – boom. The site is down. Or it’s covered with unmentionable junk because it’s been hacked.

For this little example let’s assume something happened to the server that hosts your site – servers do fail.

If you have an IT staff, you’d likely call them first, but you may not have that luxury, so the next step would be contacting your host.

They confirm the worst – your server had a  major meltdown. But, they have a backup for you. It’s one week old, would you like for them to restore it?.

Of course, you say.

Within a short amount of time  (I’m assuming here that your host has either fixed your server or moved your account to a new one) your site is up and running again.

That’s awesome! And you’re lucky that your host had that backup.

But still, you’ve lost the last five days of work, the 2.5 hours you spent writing those blog posts. They’re gone, and you’re going to have to recreate them. [Read more…] about What Would You Lose if Your Website’s Host Server Failed?

WordPress Backup Myths

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IThemes had a great post a few days ago about all the excuses WordPress site owners and managers give for not backing up their sites – and not protecting their investment. These were my three favorites, and they are all something I’ve heard from one or more clients in the last six months.

1. WordPress backs up my site automatically.

Er – no. Actually no, it doesn’t. That’s a huge misconception; maybe because WordPress seems to do so many things, like a Swiss Army knife, it’s assumed that this is just one of those things.

Maybe it’s true of WordPress.com? I’m not sure… but definitely, a self-hosted WordPress site will not magically back itself up.

2. My Web host will take care of me.

Maybe they will, maybe they won’t.

While all the hosts I’ve ever personally used assured me that they took at least weekly backups, I’ve had to rely on this three times in the entire time I’ve had websites. On one occasion I got a backup that was 4 days old, the other two were 10 days or two weeks. Not bad – but what if you’re running a very active blog, and you put out a handful of posts every day or two? That’s a lot of work you could lose in two weeks’ time, and there’s no guarantee that your host is really backing up as often as they say.

One design client that asked me to fix their site after it had been hacked was counting on their host’s backups, and was not happy to find the most recent one available was over a month old.

Don’t rely on your host. Either do it yourself or use a service that manages backups for you, preferably daily database backups.

3. I backed up once, so I’m okay (or – I have a copy of my site on a DVD from the developer).

And how old is your site? Has it changed since you backed it up that one time, or since you launched it?

If it hasn’t you may have worse problems than getting hacked… but if you’re posting new content to your site regularly as you should be, you stand to lose everything that’s gone into it since that last backup. How much work could you lose? Can you afford to lose it and have to start over? Most likely the answer is no.

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Take control of your own backup situation – either do it yourself, or check out our plans, which include daily database backups and daily or weekly full-site backups. Don’t leave it to chance or rely on someone else to handle it, it’s too important.

Shared Server Website Safety

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Shared hosting very popular primarily for two reasons:

  • It’s relatively easy to set up an account at many big-box hosts;
  • It’s generally very, very cheap.

But like many things, you get what you pay for. Shared hosting is inexpensive because so many accounts are packed tight on each server – many users, many opportunities for problems that may affect your site even if you’re playing by the rules.

Learn a few of the ways you can shut down attempts to compromise your website here.

Why Content Marketing Really Matters for Businesses Now

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I read a good post today that reinforces what I tell my WordPress clients – that unless you’re really focusing on creating high-quality content on a regular basis, you’re not using that business website as the marketing weapon that it can be.

This article from Inc Magazine about why online content marketing is so important now presents three good reasons that you should be doing it too:

  • Tough competitors and lots of options for your customers;
  • Trust is incredibly valuable and you can build it through consistent content;
  • Your highly valuable content is likely to be shared with customers’ social networks.

Check out the article, it may be a bit of an eye-opener if you’re of the ‘if we build it, they will come’ persuasion.

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