Website backups are basically an insurance policy, without the no claims bonus, extortionate premiums for young people / those in a flood risk and costs increasing year on year. They are however something you probably don’t think about until it’s too late and you really, really need to get access to your website backups. Most hosting providers will handle backups for you – but how sure are you that they’re doing a good job at backing up your website? Here are some things to check on to make sure your website backups will be there when you actually need them:
Are The Backups Offsite?
If you wanted to backup a physical document, would you keep it in the same box – or would you keep it somewhere else just incase there was a fire? Website backups are the same – if the backup is being held on the same server as the live website then if anything were to happen to that box then both the live website and the backup would be lost. Your backup solution should store the files in a separate data centre entirely to make sure if anything were to happen to the live site then you could reliably restore from a backup. It might be worth checking with your hosting provider to make sure this is the case – and if it’s not then it might be worth looking at moving to a new provider.
Do The Backups Really Work?
It’s all well and good having a box checked in your admin panel that says a backup has been done – but when was the last time you actually tried to restore a backup? It could be the case that somewhere in the backup process there is an error which is making it look like the backup is working but in reality you’re getting a corrupted file which will be no use in the event of an emergency. It’s worth making sure you restore a copy of the backup to a staging site from time to time to make sure 1. the backup is working properly but also 2. you’re familiar with the process of restoring the website from a backup. There’s nothing worse than needing to restore a copy of the site and realising you don’t know how to do it.
How Far Back Can You Go?
Having a backup from yesterday is great, but what if your site was actually hacked two weeks ago and you’re only just noticing the issues now? If your backup retention policy only keeps the last 3 days of data, you would simply be restoring a broken, infected website over the top of the current one. A robust backup plan implies a retention schedule—keeping daily backups for a month, or monthly backups for a year. This ensures that if a dormant virus or a hidden error pops up, you can travel back in time to a point before the damage occurred.
Is It Happening Automatically?
As a business owner, you have a million things to do, and “running a manual backup” is likely at the bottom of your to-do list. The most dangerous backup plan is one that relies on human memory. If you have to click a button to save your site, you are going to forget eventually. Your backup system needs to run silently in the background, on a schedule (usually nightly), without you having to lift a finger. This way, your safety net is always there, regardless of how busy your week has been.
Don’t Leave It To Chance
Returning to the insurance analogy: you wouldn’t drive a car without checking your policy is valid, so don’t run a business website without checking your backups are viable. The cost of downtime—both in lost sales and reputation—is far higher than the effort it takes to set this up correctly.
If all this talk of offsite servers, retention schedules, and staging sites sounds like a headache you’d rather not deal with, we can help. We can audit your current setup to make sure you are fully protected, or set up a bulletproof backup system for you. Drop us a message today, and let’s ensure that if the worst happens, getting back online is just a click away.