If you’re a Redcliffe small business with a business website, you’ve probably invested many hours and quite a few dollars having it developed and maintaining it. Imagine you lost all that data…
Not trying to scare you here but it can and does happen. The same as the hard drive on your local computer can fail and we need to back up the data – especially in mission critical business situations – data can get lost on external servers too. Or maliciously damaged by hackers.
Your website databases need to be backed up.
If it goes down tomorrow, what would you do? Are you confident you could get it back up and running in a timely way?
If your answer is that it’s not that important to your business anyway then you might well question why you have a website in the first place? Why spend money on designing, building and hosting it?
If your answer is that you don’t know what you would do then now’s the time to be considering the question – before the event, not after it. Let’s shut the gate before the horse has bolted!
Think of the damage a site going down could do –in terms of the time it takes to get the site back up, lost revenues (if you have an online store, for example), lost customer information or a damaged reputation.
Nowadays there are so many back up solutions around that there’s no excuse. Here’s a little about the one that we use at Redcliffe Marketing Labs.
WordPress Database Backup
WordPress Database Backup is a very simple risk management program that can back up your web site from a free plugin.
You set the program to automatically back up your site and it will email you a copy at set times after it’s done.
You can download the program here.
Here’s how you schedule a back up:
- Navigate to Administration > Tools > Backup Panel
- Select any tables, in addition to the core WordPress tables, that should be backed-up.
- Select the Backup Options; the backup can be saved on the server, downloaded, or emailed.
- Finally, click on the Backup button to actually perform the backup. You can also schedule regular backups.
If you want more information about backing up a WordPress site just click on the link.
“Cloud” Back Up
Of course if you host your own site you need to invest in other back up equipment like UPS (uninterruptable power supplies providing battery back up in the event of power failure); RAID storage to prevent data loss when hard disks fail; and off-site data back up like “cloud” services.
Off-site cloud services have become popular ways for large businesses to protect mission critical data from potential natural disasters or terrorist attacks.
But your Redcliffe small business see can also use them to back up your website. A reputable cloud service is a good solution because they look after all the expensive hardware back-up requirements for you.
Two of the best cloud solutions are Dropbox and Carbonite.
Dropbox is a service for storing and sharing large files easily but you can also use it as a back up for your web site. It provides 2GB of space for free, with subscriptions up to 100GB available. It keeps your data safe by keeping a one-month history of your work, giving the capacity to undelete files and by using 256-bit encryption.
Carbonite is an Australian service specialising in online back up that gives you access anywhere at anytime. It is ideal for a small or home business, with yearly rates as little as $60. It has a 30 day free trial.
So, no excuses. Now it’s time get forward thinking about backing up. If you haven’t got anything in place you may be playing with fire – and we know how dangerous that can be.
What back-up solutions are you using in your Redcliffe business at the moment? Got a good one? Let us know in the comments below.