After this entire situation going on and multiple requests, I cannot possibility not make a post about how to backup your website.

See this icon? It’s in your cPanel and it’s your new best friend. Use it and use it often. This post is gonna tell you how to use it and how I back up my website.

Pay close attention, this is the single most important thing you can do for your website if it means anything at all to you.

Step 1: Login to your cPanel

Step 2: Click on this backup icon

From here, you have a few different options. There are 2 that we’re going to pay close attention to.

The first: Download a home directory backup. Once you click on this, you’ll be a download. This will make sure that everything you’ve ever uploaded to FTP will get backed up. Even if you have a blog, you need to take this step to make sure that you get post images, themes, etc.

The second: Download a MySQL backup. For every database that you have on your hosted account there will be a link to download the database in this section. One by one, download each database.

Once your downloads are complete, you’ve got a full backup.

Here’s what I do.

If I take a backup of my site today, I organize it.

First I have my main folder: Im Blogging That

Inside this folder there is another: backups

Inside of backups are dated folders. Today’s backup would be stored in a folder named 10.21.07. If I backup my website tomorrow, I will not overwrite the backup I made today. Instead I’ll create a new folder in my backups folder that is named 10.22.07 and put my new backups in there tomorrow.

This means that if something happens, I can restore my site back to any date of my choosing.

Do not think that you’re going to save yourself time and click the link that reads Generate/Download a Full Backup. Really… once you generate this backup, 99% of the time you’ll forget to login via FTP and download the damn thing.

Typically, downloading a home directory backup does not take long. Follow my steps and if you decide to move hosting providers, you’re covered. If you lose your data, you’re covered.

Never, never, never rely on your host to have a backup of your website.

In this last situation I was asked “don’t you guys make a backup?” Yes, we do but it’s not for the purpose of our hosting customers. And really, here’s my challenge – find a host that says “if your site goes down and you don’t have a backup just let us know and we’ll recover it for you.”

All my years of building websites and hosting never have I seen it. I totally believe I never will.

Backing up YOUR website is YOUR responsibility. If you read my blog (and I know you do) you know longer have any excuse.

To make it even easier, this post is going on my Memorable page. Now you can come back to it whenever you want.

How often should I make a bacup?

The answer is totally up to you. Generally do it once a week. If you’ve got a blog and you blog a lot, go more often.

If you update your website a lot, go more often.

Whatever you do – if something happens you can pretty much guarantee yourself that you won’t lose much. In this entire mess my blog suffered by losing 1 post and 3 comments. In the end, I survived.

Last thing to mention…

Your hosting account is not for data storage. If you are not actively using something on your website you should NOT be storing it in your hosting account. One of the worst plugins for WordPress is the theme switcher. Why? Because this actually encourages the user to have multiple themes upload. UGH!

Those things take up room. If you are not using them, download them to your hard drive and delete! Loading all those themes takes time, slows down your website, and most of all takes up room in your hosting account.

If half the “webmasters” online would just limit what’s in their hosting account they’d find that they could probably decrease their package size by half thus paying less for hosting each month.

You don’t want crap filling your hosting account. If you install something and don’t use it, don’t leave it. Delete it!

If a script that you’re using is updated, update your script. Outdated PHP scripts are the most common way hackers access web servers – want my mess to happen to you now? I didn’t think so. (Hackers also get in by folders that have been given permissions (chmod) that do not need permissions).

Managing a website is a full time job. Simple organization and understanding webmaster procedures will speed up the time it takes you.

There’s not excuse, do it. If you make money with your website, back it up. If your blog entries are meaningful to you, back it up. If you want to move your hosting provider, back up. If your hard drive looks like it’s got a problem, back it up!

OK, end of lecture. You get the idea. But I swear, please do not whine to me if something happens. *Ü*

Technorati Tags: Website Backup, cPanel, Web Hosting, MySQL Databases, Tutorials, How To, Webmasters, Data Storage, WordPress Themes

Like It? Share It! Click It: