10 Reasons to Backup your Website

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You’ve heard it time and time again: Backup your website! Take backups…frequently! You never know when you’re going to need a backup. All responsible website owners make backups.

But then you think, what’s the worst that could happen?

To answer that question, here are 10 things that could happen to your website…and 10 reasons why you should really take backups. (Multiple backups, taken at multiple times, and stored in multiple places.)

1. HACKERS

Hackers aren’t just a leftover myth from the 90s, when the internet was new and scary. They’ve evolved, and they will hack into your website just to prove that they can. Some hacker could get bored and change your entire website to pictures of cats. Maybe some of you think that sounds like an improvement, but I’m guessing most of you would rather have a cat-free backup of your very professional business website.

2. COMEDY OF ERRORS

Picture this: You want to make a couple minor changes to your website, so you log in and change a few words. But then your think maybe you should add a section to your header, and oh wouldn’t that link look better in green? Oh and there’s a typo, better fix that, and maybe add in some images, change up the navigation a little bit, organize your directory like you’ve been wanting to, update some plugins aaaand it’s gone. Your whole website is gone FOREVER. Oh, wait. You have a backup. Phew!

3. CATASTROPHIC FAILURE

C:\> ping server: Totally fine
C:\> ping server: Don’t worry about me
C:\> ping server: No problems here
C:\> ping server: Everything’s cool
C:\> ping server: Just chillin with my bros
C:\> ping server: !! CATASTROPHIC SERVER FAILURE !!

Nobody knows what happened! One day it was fine, and the next it was on fire. Literally on fire. I sure hope those poor folks had backups.

(Disclaimer: No servers owned or operated by WebHostingPad have caught fire….yet.)

4. SPRING CLEANING

What’s this “root” folder I keep seeing? Eh, I probably don’t need it. DELETE.
…
…
…
Oh, no. That was important, wasn’t it?

5. TIME TRAVEL

Hey remember when you spent 10 hours completely overhauling your site theme until it was absolutely perfect and then two weeks later you have to restore your site from a backup and oh, wow, congratulations, you just traveled back in time – or at least your site did.

6. OLD PEOPLE

You’re tech-smart. You made a backup of your website on your home computer. Nothing can possibly happen to your site now!

And then you come home to find Gramps on the phone with “This nice gentleman from the popup who says the computer is infected. He’s using the remote to fix it!” But the computer isn’t broken, there weren’t any viruses before, this popup seems awfully sketchy–is the screen supposed to go blue like that?

7. WORDPRESS WOES

You use WordPress for your website because it’s quick, it’s easy, it’s got tons of themes and plugins for everything. Sounds perfect! Unfortunately, it’s not. That plugin you downloaded two years ago and haven’t touched since? It’s still on your site, and time has not been kind to it. The plugin gets hacked–and then your site gets hacked–and then you really wish you’d taken that backup a week ago when your site had fewer cats.

8. NEW BEGINNINGS

You made a lot of mistakes in your first go-round with the whole website thing. Who knew the market for frog-themed kitchen cozies was so small, anyway? You already know you’ll do much better this time — Kitten Kozies are going to sell like wildfire! — but now you need to start a new blog from scratch… If only you had a copy of your old website, you could just replace the frog pictures with kitten pictures….

9. NEW PHONE, WHO DIS?

Tell me if this sounds familiar: You’re out with your friends, having a good time, taking selfies, dropping your phone into that fishbowl Becky swore she’d drink. Next thing you know, you’re texting back “new phone, who dis?” 20 times a day. Your friends are starting to get annoyed. Now imagine the same thing happening with your website, and all your business contacts. Renee from that Marketing Firm is NOT going to be happy.

10. JUST BECAUSE

The fact of the matter is, taking timely backups is just good practice. It only takes a few moments of your time, and it fixes a garden variety of issues that can crop up. Don’t think you’re impervious to these issues, either — no one is perfect, and the internet is weird like that. Sometimes things just go wrong, and there’s no rhyme or reason to it. Only a solution. And that solution is…a backup.