What if you wake up in the morning and find that your web site has been deleted by mistake? This has happened with so many people out there on the web. It is very important that you have a backup for the efficient working of your website even if you lose the database accidentally. This article is going to introduce you with the importance of website backups. In addition, you will know how to backup websites in a simple and easy way.
The Importance of Website Backups
There are many reasons why you must create backups of your websites. Some of these reasons are described as under:
1. It is not the responsibility of your web host to create backups for you. Most of the web hosts do not provide security to your database. Some of them do but they do it for their own safety. They do not provide the customers with required files.
2. Developing a site on your local computer or on a test server does not mean that it is enough for the protection of your website. Websites change over time and these changes do not appear in the real version. In case you are running a blog, forum and CRM,
your useful content is used by the users and it is not going to exist in the other places.
3. When you have a backup, you are ready to react whenever your database gets deleted. You also need to have a website backup becuase you do not want to lose income and get SEO penalties.
4. You get peace of mind when you have already created backup for your website database. You do not have to worry about the loss of data, as you will know that there is a backup, which can work when you lose the data by mistake.
5. Mostly, the web hosts do not run virus scanners on the websites. Therefore, you must have a website backup for your simple and ultimate protection. The data backups do not protect your website from attacks but it does fix the issues when required.
Solutions for Creating Backup
This software helps you in copying the files from one serve to the other. The software transfers files which have been altered. This saves you a lot of bandwidth and time too. You need to have a second server of Linux if you want to set up Rsync. In case you choose Cron Job for backing up the database for you, Rsync is going to work on the rest of the things. In case you have MySQL database, then you can easily create a backup by running a script on mysqldump. This script is free and is installed in Linux by default.
Cloud Backup
Cloud is a perfect solution if you want to keep your backup safe and secure. It is backed up and it works with full redundancy. Here are some easy solutions if you want to back up to cloud:
Dropbox:
Dropbox is a cloud based backup tool and is considered perfect for backing up. If you are user of WordPress, then you can use variant plugin which save your data and all the installations of WordPress are backed up on a specific frequency.
Amazon S3:
If you want to get your data in S3, you will need some time to finish server software installation. If you fail to have an access to the server, you can use variant tools for other platforms which have been designed for attaining the data on S3. For Instance, WordPress users who are unable to install the software, they may use Backup Buddy plugin which backs up the data to Amazon S3.
Automated Backup
There are many automated services which can control your website backups. Some of the options are:
CodeGuard: It focuses the features of alerts and detection of malware when you change the website. This software provides automatic website backups and manual procedures too.
Dropmysite: It is an ultimate solution of backup which connects through FTP and then downloads the backups. It actually re-downloads the whole website.