Sooner or later in the life of every site comes disaster. It’s not a matter of ‘if’ – it’s a matter of when.

A full and complete backup provides the only protection against these disasters. The details of the backup depend on the platform on which the site is built.

Simple HTML or PHP sites are the easiest to backup. Your webhost provider will offer backups – which you should use! – but you should also backup your entire site to your own local computer. Compress the entire site to one or more archives, depending on the size of your site, and download it to your PC. Then backup your PC, keeping a copy of the backup offsite. I use one of the many online services for this purpose – it happens automatically and the backup is available anywhere the internet is available. You may choose some other mechanism, but you are not properly protected until you have a verified backup stored away from your home or office.

If you are using WordPress, Joomla, Drupal or some other CMS (Content Management System), the backup will be much more complicated because you have to backup the CMS itself and the plug-ins (including the settings for the plug-ins) in addition to the content of your site. For WordPress, we recommend VaultPress. If you are using Joomla, Drupal or some other CMS, contact us for backup solution suggestions.