Set up your backups now! And here's why....

The Importance of Backing Up Your Website: Safeguarding Your Online Presence

A few years after I start The Smart Bear, there was a big hoo-haa because 123reg managed to accidentally delete all the content on their servers - they deleted a lot of websites! And the backups!

We don’t know how many sites were lost but at the time, they had something like 800,000 UK clients, according to this article about it from the BBC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-36072240

I knew of a couple of people who had been one of their customers; some lost everything….everything! And some were savvy enough to have off-site backups so could restore their website.

And so, as a result of this, I totally advocate taking off-site backups, even if your website is very small. If your site is deleted, it’s just a real faff to recreate it - plus money and time you don’t need to spend.

What is an ‘off-site backup’?

An off-site backup is one that isn’t held in the same place as the actual website - so not on the same server/hosting etc. It’s usually held on a separate cloud drive or even on email if you have enough storage capacity.

Now…not every website platform has the ability to take off-site backups, so I’ll tell you what you can do on as many platforms as I can think of.