Such a simple task but not everyone is doing it. If you do not know how to backup your data please call your hosting company and ask them to walk you through it. I know HostGator has a tutorial video in their cPanel.
Three Examples Why:
Andrew, a friend of mine and one of my developers almost lost 75+ of his websites. I couldn’t believe it when the guy that does my backups doesn’t do his own. Luckily for him it was an operating system issue and was able to recover all of his data. Downside was it took 2-3 days to get everything back online. You can read everything he has to say about it at DayOnlineSolutions.com.
DNUnderground.com, a domaining blog, lost everything over the weekend. In this case his hosting company was not able to recover anything. Luckily he contacted me, thanks to Andrew (my developer) I was able to walk him through recovering the majority of his articles. We instructed him to do a Google search, site:dnunderground.com and select the cached articles one by one. Using this simple trick he was able to copy the majority of his articles, titles and dates. Once the site is back online it is a simple cut and paste of the articles with dates and titles. This worked for this occasion but will not always work, it depends on how often Google visits and caches your site.
YGrab.com, another domaining blog, lost everything in August. Since losing everything only 14 posts have been made, one of which to say backup your data.
Personally, if I lost all of my files I don’t think I could blog again. Two reasons, one I couldn’t imagine starting from scratch and two because I would be too embarrassed. How embarrassing to be in this business and not back up your files.
Please do not learn the hard way, backup your sites ASAP. I did a complete backup last night, took 24 minutes, which will be worth every minute if my sites go down. From that point I only need to do regular backups for my content. This I will do once or twice a week which should only take a few minutes.
One last thing, do not expect your hosting company to save you. As stated below backing up your files is a courtesy, not an obligation. I found this in my HostGator account, similar to any of the hosting companies out there. “Your use of this service is at your sole risk. Our backup service is provided to you as a courtesy. HostGator is not responsible for files and/or data residing on your account. You agree to take full responsibility for files and data transferred and to maintain all appropriate backup of files and data stored on HostGator servers“. Basically your loss and you can’t sue. Backup your files!!!
I lost my data once in 2004. I was hosting with an oversees company! They got hacked, so they said, and all their drives were erased. Luckily at the time I only had 2 sites, one was backed up, but I lost a year and a half worth of post on my blog, and archive.org did not have very many archived. I learned my lesson then. I now do nightly and weekly backups, local and off site, and I have RAID setup. I appreciate the RAID technology! It has proven worthy on few occasions in the last couple of years.
I also had bad experience when moving between hosts, some because they were too expensive, others because their servers had a very high shared population. In 2005 I started my own hosting service, with couple of dedicated boxes in a data center. It’s a very steep learning curve and it requires time to learn all the necessary software. Since I decided to do this I have not been happier.
Very, very good tips! Backing up is very important, and you can never be too safe.
You know what — I’m gonna go and do a backup of all my sites right away.
Great post!
David
To clear things up — The backup process should be done via cPanel, right? Just click on Backup — and download the zip? That’s it?
Are you using HostGator?
If yes then you’ll go to your cPanel files section, then Backups. You’ll want to do a FULL backup the first time. They will email you once the file is ready for download.
I don’t use HostGator, but cPanel is the same everywhere. I originally thought to do it by hand — download the files via FTP, export the .sql file, etc.
But if it’s possible via cPanel, then no need for that.
Thanks Pat.
I host all my sites in USA and they have their own Backups. Best still, I host with the companies that are in my city, supporting the local economy and I even know those tech support personally.
live phone support!!!
It is damn stupid to host outside USA.
I don’t even do a backup on my 200+ websites, because my hosting have their own automatic backup.
@BullS
You should always take double backups. That’s one online and one offline to your home PC or USB drive etc.
What’s your plan if your hosting company’s SAN is hacked or their RAID fails?
- Richard
Thanks for this article. It was the kick in the pants I needed to dust off my thumb drive and start backing up my files. In fact, I thought this article was so important, it is my featured post on themoneybiz.com. Thanks Chef.
My pleasure, and thanks for posting on your site. Very nice theme, hmmm same one this site is modeled off of
Cpanel webhosting is one the easiest panels to allow backups from you can even get desktop software to automate backups daily/weekly/monthly.
You could also have another reseller/hosting account with another provider and configure CPANEL to automatically FTP daily.
Note: Always have email notification turned on it’s good to know when backups are being completed.
Patrick and Andrew were life savors. I really appreciate what they did for DNUnderground and myself. DNUnderground should be up within the next few days once disputes get settled between BlueHost and DNUnderground. Once this happended, I immediately backed up all my databases, and good job Chef reminding everyone to do the same! Again, thanks a million!
@Patrick,
FYI, a really easy way to backup a Wordpress blog is to set up a cron job to dump your mysql database every day, at say 5am, and email you a zipped copy.
That way you have a daily copy in case you lose all your data OR if your blog gets hacked.
- Richard
What’s your plan if your hosting company’s SAN is hacked or their RAID fails?
- Richard
Then I will sue them!!! ha ha
Yes trust me it really really sucks to lose all your data. I had over 50+ articles lost on YGrab.com. Since then its been kind of slow going to get up to full speed. With many other projects taking the head, it’s hard to recover. Though it is going to be taking a more prominent role here in the future
!
Ross – was it client (meaning you) error, or server error? I know I am negotiating with my hosting company, did you do the same? And I will see if there willing to settle for anything. Hopefully I will get something out of them…
The host company went out of business and did not let anyone know ahead of time. So make sure you make back ups and choose a hosting company that is well known, even though they may cost a bit more.
Thanks Chef: This is a great reminder
Unfortunately, I’ve learned this lesson the hard way.
I think after it happens once, you tend to be a paranoid and are more likely to regularly back-up sites.
Great post, Chef, indeed. The moment I read it, I went ahead and backed up all my sites. It took me about an hour, but it’s time well spent.
Thanks for reminding us.
dmi
PS. The “Contact” link in the footer doesn’t work. You might want to change the permalink from ‘contact-us’ to ‘contact’.
Thanks for pointing out the broken link. Fixed
That why get a host in your local area with live tech support, you know where they are at and have lunch with them
stay away from outside USA or those who have only email support esp DreamHost aka deathhost or dyinghost.
http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?p=4130047&posted=1#post4130047
My host is in the city I live in, I know the people and best of all, supporting the local economy.
I totally agree with your advice.
I lost one of my biggest websites back in 2005 for the exact same reason.
Now, I take backups on weekly/monthly basis and save it on my laptop and my own desktop PC. I even lately started to make additional backup to all my business files on USB stick (just in case).
Hi Patrick-
a very important lesson indeed – I learnt it the hard way a few years back- luckily I only lost a couple of small minisites… One thing I would say to anyone who has lost sites is to use archive.org to retrieve files as google cache doesn’t stick around for long…
I once lost 15 of my minisites that were producing around $500 per month. It happened because of the host. I was lucky enough to recover the content using Google cache and rebuild them but it took some precious time. Also, in the time they were down, they lost some positions in ranking so the revenue was down too for the next months. I then looked for a website backup solution and found Site-Vault which does all the backup process automatically. It was the best money I ever spent.