Imagine a scenario where you think everything is going perfectly well with your online business and then one fine day, you realise you’ve lost all your website data! Scary, isn’t it? Now, this can happen accidentally by you or your web host. Either way, if you don’t have a backup in place then you’re in a very big fix! In fact, according to a study, 58% of small businesses aren’t prepared for a data loss. To help you be on the other side of the 58% so that you don’t lose your data or your business, we’ve prepared a guide to help you backup your website. So without further ado, let us begin!
Why website backups are important
Being prepared is always better than finding a solution when something bad happens later on! This includes more than website protection as your website can be a victim of not just security threats like viruses but also, human (yours/web host) or disasters like a server crash or malfunctioning.
Some ways in which your website data could be compromised are:
- Human error
- Environmental disasters (affecting the servers)
- Security threats like malware, viruses, etc.
- System failure or malfunctions
- Corrupt software
Your peace of mind that your website is safe even if any of the above happens is extremely important. And so it is vital to always take a backup of your website daily or at regular intervals.
Which Backup Solution to Choose
There are several ways to backup your website, but they can roughly be classified into local and online backup.
While local backup services allow you to back up data at your own pace and flexibility, it lacks the effectiveness (example: you need to invest in a different storage location), efficiency and is also time-consuming.
Online backups, on the other hand, are effective in terms of storage space (most of them automatically back up over the cloud), alert you immediately if there is any change to your website, and allow you to restore your data at any point. This ensures that your website backup is always up to date and even protected from hackers.
We at BigRock offer an online backup service, CodeGuard that automatically takes a backup of your website at regular intervals. Before moving with how you can use CodeGuard to help you take a backup, let us see some of its advantages.
Advantages of CodeGuard
- CodeGuard is an automatic cloud backup solution that can backup your website daily, weekly, monthly or never based on whenever you want.
- It allows you to restore your website backup at any point in time.
- It has a simple and hassle-free setup process, as well as, is easy to use with little manual user involvement.
- You get regular backup updates as CodeGuard monitors your website’s files & databases for changes and notifies you of changes if any.
- Lastly, your website data is secured and encrypted using AES 256 bit techniques and stored in Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3).
How to backup a website with CodeGuard
Backing up your website with CodeGuard is a simple 4-part process.
- Connect your website files to CodeGuard
Here you simply add the website URL, select the server (FTP or SFTP), enter the server credentials username, password and IP address of the server and click on ‘Test Website Connection’
- Choose the files you wish to backup
Once your server is connected you will be redirected to a new screen as shown in the image below. Select the root directory of your website and click on the ‘Select Root Directory’ button to proceed.
- Monitors your website
CodeGuard doesn’t allow anything to go unnoticed. It detects any changes made to your website and notifies you instantly. You control the settings on your dashboard about what all you want to be updated about.
- Restores your website
Lastly, CodeGuard stores your backup in its repository with complete with a timestamp and detailed information on each change and allows you to restore it whenever you want. You can either restore it automatically online or do it manually by downloading the .zip file of your backup.
And we’re done! Setting up CodeGguard to backup your website is easy!
Additional Reads
If you’re using our Shared Hosting services or any other hosting plan that supports cPanel/Plesk, you can read our detailed guide that covers how to add CodeGuard to your hosting control panel to allow you to seamlessly backup your website files and databases.
We hope this article helped you understand the importance of backup and how to backup a website. If you have any comments or queries, do leave them in the comments box below!
