Simple Sound Advice – Back-up your website

I think the title says about it all. Back-up your website… but how, where, why and really how?

It’s happened to us all, our computers have just simply broken down, we’ve dropped a phone, lost a password or the hard disk has gone kaput! You know what I mean.  At best it’s all just solidly inconvenient and at worst it’s a complete nightmare that can take days to sort out.

The truth is computer manufacturers have been less than helpful, most people have to take the computer back to the shop where they brought it from to get it fixed or they can have-a-go at it themselves, it usually ends in disaster.  So what about your website.

Back-up Checklist

We do hope that our websites are better looked after, but it’s worth checking.  You might look for the following:

1. Does your Hosting Provider have a back-up facility and are you using it.  Often it is a good idea if they have an ‘off-site’ back up option in case of flooding or fire in which case your back-up might be destroyed as well.
2. Do you or someone you know (i.e. your website designer) have a copy – how recent is it and are they or you taking regular copies
3. Have a think about email as well, often this is dependent on your hosting, as they often supply both services.

If in doubt ask the guy who designed your website to find out the above.  But there is a bit more to backing up your website, Payments, today alone I have had three clients call me up with website problems (not working) all three were due to an expired Domain Name – they had not paid for the renewal.  we live in a rushed world and there is little time to check these things, but an expired credit card could mean days of lost website and email.

Website Maintenance

Having sorted out your Back-up so that you at least ‘know’ what is going on and have either delegated responsibility or done something about it.  Now what can you do to prevent needing a website back up?

So many of our websites are either:

1. WordPress – the worlds most popular website platform, it’s also the most prone to hacking, meaning it’s an easy target for malicious coders who are usually just doing these things for fun.
2. eCommerce – using popular eCommerce platforms like Magento, oCommerce or WooCommerce – again make prime targets for hackers, but now you have sensitive client information within your website as well, doubly imperative you are not only backed up but secure.
3. Hosted on a 3-party system like Blogger, Wix, Shopify and so on, all it takes is a password to be hacked and you might lose everything.

Am I just scaring you – well right now possibly yes, all our websites are under control touch wood, but honestly, you get Car Insurance, House Insurance and you attend dental checkups just in case, why can you not do the same for your website – just 10 minutes spent on this subject and you can rest easy, you don’t even have to spend any money (so long as no action is required) to back-up your website.

What We Offer

I’m going to put this here, because it’s not fair on us when clients call us up wondering why their email is not working… so here is a list of what we can do to help back-up your website.

1. Domain Name Management – why leave it to chance that your domain name will expire without you realising (as has happened three times this week).  We can manage the domain name, renew it for you and check appropriately that it is still required by you.
2. Hosting – NCompass offer every type of hosting available from basic to dedicated, yes we use 3rd parties, but we’ve had 19 years of experience with who we use and we recommend the right option for the right clients.  We’re on hand with support and telephone and we’re not a faceless company with a contact form to fill in.  We will get your problem sorted.  Plus all websites with us are backed up nightly automatically and we do take periodical backups ourselves in house.
3. Web Maintenance – If you have a WordPress or Magento or other platform based website – we can maintain it (this is not web management or anything to do with Content or Marketing), we will keep the website working in tip top condition, updated, fresh and alive, we have monitors in place to check the websites and ensure all is working correctly.  So much of your Back-up need are down to prevention and basic security, that a well maintained website will probably save you a lot of heart ache.PS. Our most famous client had his website hacked, just because his web-designers failed to keep it maintained.

Yes there are costs involved, but these are small and for the price probably the best value service NComp@ss offers.  Back-up and Maintenance are essential, I can’t scare you enough, until the day comes when disaster strikes.  You need to back-up your website.

Just take the 10 minutes needed to find out if all is OK.