OK – I realized that I have been talking about backups quite a bit recently. It is something that is near and dear to my heart. In my most recent post about backing up your site, WordPress Backups , I mentioned that you should not rely on your hosting company to perform your backups. There was some discussion via the comments that my top solution, a premium script called WPTwin, was unnecessary because hosting companies make complete backups and there is nothing to be concerned about.
Just yesterday, I received a link to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald (Yup!聽Sydney, Australia), titled, 4800 Aussie sites evaporate after hack. You can read the entire article if you want, but the main points include:
- At least 4800 Australian websites have been lost with no chance of recovery following a break-in at Australian domain registrar and web host Distribute.IT.
- Comments by those affected include things like, “the hack ‘has probably killed my business'”.
- In a published statement, the hosting company said, “At this time, We regret to inform that the data, sites and emails… can be considered by all the experts to be unrecoverable,”
- Rob McAdam, CEO of security firm Pure Hacking, said the issue was a “catastrophic problem” for those with websites hosted by the hacked host. “If these clients had no other backup other than what was at [the hosting company], they would then have to rebuild their site – from scratch,” he said.
For reasons like this, I prefer to create my own backups and store them someplace NOT on my hosting server (like my own personal computer). And after using for 4 months, I absolutely love WPTwin – I can honestly say it is some of the best money I have ever spent!
Yup – backing up is a must. I do use an WP backup plugin, but I also export my content and save it on my hard drive. What will WPTwin do for me that I can’t do manually?
Eydie 馃檪
Eydie –
Excellent job having your content at a location other than your hosting company! WP Backup backs up the data that is in your database. Just remember that you have more than that on your site – you have the files for the plugins, you have the current theme (and possibly others), and other files that do not get backed up with WP Backup. Be prepared to do some additional work in the event of a disaster!
Check out the post – WordPress Backups – for some more info.
I use the Word Press Database Backup plugin and I have my files emailed to me daily on my gmail account. That way I can access the files anywhere, anytime and with unlimited storage on gmail I should be good, right? Thoughts?
Traci –
That is certainly a start! Congratulations on backing up – that is more than many people do! However, check out this other post I wrote on WordPress Backups – this explains why you may not be completely safe.
Let me know if you have any questions.
Paul.
Absolutely. I back up to my computers hard drive. In addition I also back up on a portable hard drive. Backing up with “regularity” is a must as well. Thanks for a great reminder 馃檪
Paul, the thought of losing my content makes me queezy. I’m going to migrate over to WP within the next two months – in the interim, what’s the best way to back up my content via Blogger? Any suggestions?
Sounds like this is a good topic for me to write about, Tor! Let me do some research, i will check with a blog I have with Blogger (that I use for various non-essential reasons) and I will write something up later today!
Thanks for the suggestion!
Paul.
Will a service like Carbonite do the job or would it be better to use the suggested WPTwin? Enjoying the class!
It can – I have used it for my personal desktop computer, but never directly on a hosted server. That is a great question! Let me check into it so I can get you an answer!
In the ‘worst case’ you will have to back up the site to your local machine and then Carbonite will back it up from your computer!