Technology, business and change
Backup your website to avoid horror stories
You’ve got your website nicely setup, a custom theme, lots of content, a nice income coming in everyday without you doing much but still…NO BACKUP! What’s that? I’ve seen that too often and I have to go through the importance of a full backup for your websites! The subject has been covered before, it will be covered in the future but I steel feel like writing about it. It’s my blog after all, you know: if I feel it’s good, I write about it. 
Why no backup?
You know you have to, but still you don’t do it! I could go and tell you: “I learned it the hard way, you know. My website got hacked, then I lost everything, blah blah blah”, but you know all that don’t you? It seems like there’s no argument to convince people to backup their website, only a bad experience can convince them. I’ve warned many persons and told them they should do a full backup of their websites just in case something goes wrong but it’s really a low priority until something bad happens. Then at least I can say “I told you”, but it doesn’t help much. Designing a new theme, writing a post or coding a new little tool for your website is always more attracting than making a backup and that’s why most people don’t backup. There’s always something better to do!
It takes 5 mins, once a week
I backup all my stuff once a week, but I must admit I haven’t done it for the past three weeks because I’ve been so busy. What? Too busy? It only takes five minutes, and I wrote a new article everyday in the past three weeks as well as commenting on other blogs and doing some link building. OK, time wasn’t an issue, there was just so many better things to do! You see how we always come to that.
Anyway, the point is that I usually backup once a week and it takes a little 5 minutes. Five minutes per week isn’t that much compared to the time you’ll lose if something goes wrong. I like a new backup every week and I feel it’s the perfect timing. A week of work is the maximum amount of information I feel comfortable loosing without feeling the need to kill myself. How much information is your life worth?
What to backup?
A full backup for me is a backup of the files on my server with a dump of the database as well as an export of my posts via WordPress. If you’re not running a blog, you simply need to backup the files on your server and your database. There are a lot of ways to do that kind of backup. If you use CPanel with your host, CPanel offers a backup function so you can backup the combination of your database and files (I know I have the old CPanel version, I have to ask for an upgrade…):
And then:
Then, the process will start and you’ll receive a notification via email when the backup is complete. It shouldn’t take too long if you have a relatively small account. Then, when the backup is complete, a single .zip file will be generated with all the information on you host!
Have a blog? At least export your posts!
Let’s say you’re too lazy to backup your stuff and you have a WordPress blog, please export your posts into XML! WordPress has a nice little feature that let you export all your posts and comments into a single XML file that can then be imported back into WordPress. How great is that? It doesn’t backup your theme or anything like that, but a blog is all about content, isn’t it?
Now backup
We spend so many time on our websites, so having a backup is a must! You don’t want to loose everything and start all over again, so take that five minutes now and backup that little gem of yours!
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i’m a Filipino blogger and i love this kind of hobby. although my blog did not encountered any problem yet, i tried to back some important things in my blog especially the template and some widgets. thanks for the tips anyways. i love this world.
Uh, I need to look into that. Not sure of the process for “Blogger,” of course, but it’s something to consider!
I just backed up yesterday nicht my whole sql database, i wasthinking, imagen if somthing went wrong with wordpress mu… since opening last month we have 67 bloggerss …. they wouldnt be too happy if they los tthier blogs XD
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The most important thing that most of people not think about it or don’ know how to do it.. great post.TQ
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Yes, how do you do this process for blogger? I am very curious.
Thanks!
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I don’t have easy backup solution in my hosting (it is handled full auto and I must make formal request to get backups) so to backup wordpress, theme and other stuff I just dump everything from my ftp account from time to time.
For posts I have wordpress plugin that mails me my SQL database every week.
Only takes few mins to setup and after that backups come on their own.
About 2 months ago (before hurricane season started), I had my web host put my entire site on a backup CDR, and mail it to me. He grumbled about it, charged me $20 for the labor & materials….reasonable amount for my peace of mind. Now I know that I’ll NEVER need to use it! That’s the Murphy’s Law of backups: you will NEVER have to use it when you have it. (FYI: my web host is located in Texas!)
Most often we dont take this seriously and what follows is disaster. thanks for the post mate
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Ben:
Thank you for the advice. I immediately backed up my site which I had not saved since I upgraded to WordPress 2.5
Thanks again!
Remi
Came back here looking for any new posts and then re read this post and suddenly it hit me. .. . . i never made a post backup >.< done that now and created a folder, i think ill commit to a full backup every week to make sure my blog andour subdomain bloggers dont lose anything.
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Thanks you guys for commenting! Sorry if I didn’t get back to you any sooner, today was a little busy!
@jigs: Thanks a lot!
@Ethan: Yeah I know, blogger is always a different consideration…would have to investigate a little further!
@Tyrone: Totally agree with you. Because you actually host some blogs, it’s really a good idea to backup those!
@Gilbert: Thanks!
@Petra: I have to investigate a little further with Blogger. I never used it to be honest!
@Rarst: Do you mind sharing your wordpress plugin with us? I might consider using it.
@Matt: Yeah…that’s what Murphy’s law is all about!
@zk: No problems mate, thanks for your comment.
@Remi: Hey, good move from you to backup!
@Tyrone gain: Good move! Post backup is probably the most important thing!
Thanks for reminding me this one and for the steps on how to do it. This is what I’ve been wanting to do with my blog.
No problems marydane and thanks for taking the time to comment!
You know I learned to make back-up’s the hard way. A few years ago I had 23 sites hosted with Her Web Host. One day we woke up and they all were gone and the web host phone was shut off. Long story short, they were no longer in business and we lost every website we had hosted. It took forever to get all of them back online, since I had never made a back up. We now use cpanel hosting, and it is simple to make a back up, just a push of a button.
@Ben
Here is link for it:
http://www.ilfilosofo.com/blog/wp-db-backup
Great, thanks for sharing Rarst!
@WAHM Tara: God, losing 23 websites at once…At least you backup now!
Very, very good point Ben! Actually, for those who don’t want to take the “5 mins, once a week” that you mentioned, I use the same plugin Rarst spoke of (http://www.ilfilosofo.com/blog/wp-db-backup) … it works great.
Even when Backing up has slipped my mind because of everything else going on, I receive a back-up copy of my blogs database sent directly to my Email every monday!
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Great advice, it is crucial to back up everything, the heartache of the loss is indescribable.
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I agree. I use a wordpress plugin to auto backup my databases and email them to me daily. I haven’t tried the cpanel one though, I must check that one out! Thanks for the tutorial man, you got this place rockin!
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@Jon: Yeah that plugin is awesome!
@JR: Totally crucial if you want to avoid killing yourself
@JK: Everybody seems to use that plugin, I guess I’m the only one who wasn’t using it hehe. It’s really a great tool…
Thanks again for your comment JK!
Thanks to the article, Now there is more reason to comment than ever before! Everyone should participate. I am incorporating what your wrote to our project!
Backing up your website is crucial. If you are a freelance designer or manage websites for clients in any way then nothing can be more important than maintaining full copies of the entire code and database. Like many others I have learnt it the hard way. I have lost the original website code on a number of occasions for a range of reasons. Hacking attack is of course on but by no means the only. I recently had a web hosting company completely block a clients account because the client ran an email campaign and received more than 10,000 hits on a single day. Although the web-hosts claimed to offer unlimited bandwidth even the modest of traffic was enough for them to block access to servers. I had to ultimately pay extra just to raise a special technical support ticket for them to provide me with a backup of my code.
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Thanks for the info.
I have never even thought about backing up my site, and then one day… BAM!
My site was hacked and it all was gone
Now i practically back up my site everyday
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