Back ups are by no means a new thing. Since as long as we’ve had PCs, the advice has always been to have back ups of your important data and projects. With websites, you might not think this is the case, since the internet is its own backup. Unfortunately, this is not the case, and it is more vital than ever to back up your website. With around 4.1 million websites being infected with malware in the world, and around 2,306 weekly bot visits to the average site, backing up your site is vital.
Let’s look at a few reasons why.
- Malware
First and foremost is the threat of malware and viruses, as I mentioned. Bot traffic has increased as much as five times over recent years, and these bots pose serious cyber threats to a site if you aren’t properly prepared. Malware can destroy your site, and you may not even realize it’s happening. Over time, viruses can destroy your files and ultimately render your site unusable.
If there’s one reason you should back up your site regularly, it’s to be sure that you don’t run the risk of losing your site to a malicious cyber-attack.
- Human errors
Even without the threat of malware, though, you’ve still got a big problem with the potential for human error. You’ve got to account for your own potential to cause problems for your site that you might struggle to come back from. Even with a lot of experience, you might simply install a module which breaks the ordinary functioning of the site.
In many cases, it’s going to be far easier to restore from back up than to try and correct the problem. So, be sure to back up if only so you don’t risk your own or your team’s errors causing irreversible damage.
- Crashing
Even as far as home PCs have come, the threat of crashing is never gone entirely. And this is another really important reason you should not only back up your website, but you should have multiple backups. Keep one on your PCs hard drive, one on the live site itself, and one on overcast storage.
Don’t have only one back up on your PCs hard drive, as there is always the chance something could go critically wrong with the PC itself.
- Updates
Updates are not always perfect, and there’s always the chance, if slight, that they will do damage to your site. Without enough memory, or if the site is overloaded or the updates simply aren’t compatible for some reason, any of this could cause fundamental damage to the site. But you need the updates—so back ups give you peace of mind to update freely.
- Access to files
Finally, backing up your files in another place can also mean you can have access to those files anywhere. If it is backed up to the cloud, for instance, then you can access the files for moment-to-moment edits and updates while you are away from your desk.
Having this kind of remote access is really invaluable, since you may be needed to edit your site at any moment in the case of updates or malware.
The reasons to back up are manifold, then, and some of them pretty intuitive when you think about it. Even if there were no threat of losing your site to viruses or errors, though, there’s still plenty of good reason to back up your site, if only so you can access the files where ever you are. Don’t take the chance—back up your website.