It’s Monday morning.
It feels just like any other morning. You get up, grab a cup of coffee .. maybe a muffin.. and then walk over to your computer.
As you double click on your favorite browser, you get a weird feeling in your gut.
You think… “something’s not right..”
You quickly type in your website URL and try to log into your wordpress dashboard:
www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin
… but you see nothing. You try refreshing the page.. and still nothing. You can’t access your site. All you see are error messages. That feeling in your gut is amplified and an overwhelming feeling of loss starts to creep in.
Years of hard work … blood, sweat and tears. LOST!
What could’ve happened? Many different things can cause your site to crash, that’s why you should always have a backup of your wordpress site.
But if you’re not convinced yet, here are 4 more reasons designed to scared the hell outta you and get you to act.
1. You’re responsible.. Not your hosting company
That’s right! Your hosting company may offer website backup but there’s nothing more secure than doing your own.
Hosting companies usually backup databases in order to cover there asses in case a server crashes, but not all of them will backup your content, comments, images.. etc.
Plus, if you update your website regularly, they probably won’t have the most up-to-date version in their backup.
2. Avoid disaster – Viruses and Hackers do exist
Your website can catch a virus or even worse, you can get hacked. If any of these happen, having a backup of your site will save you a ton of time when everything gets sorted out.
If you’re using cPanel, you can scan your website for viruses right now. Just log in, scroll down and look for the “Virus Scan” button and click it. =)
3. WordPress Plugins can crash your site
It doesn’t take a hacker to crash your site, you can actually crash it yourself.
The WordPress community does a pretty good job of keeping this open-source software we use clean and problem free. But the interaction between multiple plugins on your site can cause issues.
I’ve had my site crash in the past due to plugins – finding which one is the culprit is no fun at all. I wasn’t worried though.. wanna know why?
‘Cuz I had a recent backup of all my stuff.
4. Get back on your feet quickly
Another reason you might want to backup your site is to avoid down time. If you’re getting a ton of visitors and subscribers on a daily basis, being down means you get none of that.
No traffic = No Leads = No Cash. Is that scary enough for you?
What I Recommend You Do:
Get the Backup Buddy plugin.
Yes, it’s a paid plugin but it’s the best investment you’ll make as far as securing your website and all your hard work.
It’s the one I’ve always used. They make backing up wordpress a breeze. One-click and you’re done. ..and you can download the files directly to your computer.
I keep my backups in a separate hard drive just to be safe.
Plus, restoring it couldn’t be easier. Yes, there are other plugins that can create backups, but Backup Buddy’s import script makes the importing process dead simple.
Anyhoo…
Do you have horror stories? Has your site ever crashed? Leave it in the comments.. and tell us how you handled it.
Thanks for the tip Hector! I used BUB to migrate a Site for a client, and that itself paid for the plug in (just an idea for any bloggers who may be turned off by the price)
I’m never diligent about making back ups (of anything, including my computer) though I know I should. Guess this is my wake up call!
As a side note Hector, I’m reading this on my phone; have you ever considered optimizing your Site for mobile devices? If so, I have a feeling you’ll chronicle your journey, and I’ll be looking forward to that post because that’s something I want to do for my own Site. Hopefully the differences between Genesis and thesis aren’t so great that I won’t be able to follow that post.
Thanks again for the tip!
Rasheed
Thanks for this important information. Question….Blue Host claims it backs up my website daily, but of course I have never verified this. Your thoughts and advice?
Thank you and enjoy your day!
I wouldn’t rely on their backups alone. I use Bluehost and I feel better knowing that my backups are secure and accessible at any given moment.
One time I suffered a corruption of my site. At the time I had almost 100 pages. I had adequate backups, but that didn’t solve the issue. I had sucuri search and clean up my site. They made specific recommendations to avoid this in the future. How did I find them? Through backup buddy!
wow, I’m glad everything turned out fine. ..and that’s why Backup Buddy is awesome!!
i already wasted one of my site just because i dont have a back up my site was hacked and all data was lost. It is very hard to overcome with such a disaster.
I am just recovering from being hacked last week! My site was taken over by some hacker who accessed blog through a plugin. I have had terrible technical support from my hosting company, but luckily was finally able to get support and a clean back-up so I can move to BlueHost. This is the second time I have been severely hacked within 1 1/2 years. I will be using BackupBuddy from now on…thanks for validating my choice in deciding upon BlueHost and BackupBuddy!