You may already have backups, but are they stored in a safe location?
Creating and managing a website is easier than it once was, but things still go wrong. Sites still get hacked. Updates might break certain features, or bring entire websites down. Mistakes get made, sometimes right before a really important, high-traffic day.
To avoid these situations, making a backup of your site on a regular basis is critical. It’s even more important to ensure that this backup happens outside of your host. But many of us are guilty of failing to prioritize this important task.
In this post, we’ll cover why you need to perform regular backups, why they should be made offsite, and offer a solution so that you won’t have to worry about losing your data in the event of a mistake or emergency.
Take the initiative to regularly back up your site — without relying on your host
There are several important reasons why you need to back up your website and its data outside of your host. Here are a few of them:
Not all backups are created equal
Unfortunately, many hosts will not back up your site regularly. Those that do make backups do so for their own protection, may not make those files available to you, or may charge extra fees for the service.
Sometimes, even if a host does provide access to your backup files, you’ll have to pay an additional fee to restore your site in the event of an emergency. This can result in additional frustration, not to mention downtime or lost sales, in the event of an emergency.
Keeping your original website files is not enough
Having files provided by a developer or designer aren’t enough to restore your website if it crashes, especially if new content is constantly being added. To fully restore a WordPress site, you also need access to your database, where your posts, pages, comments, settings, and other important data is stored and constantly updated.
If your backup doesn’t include your database — or you can’t access your database at all — you’re not going to have much luck recovering from data loss.
Offsite backups let you restore your site quickly
Having the most recent website backup immediately available allows you to fix problems quickly. You don’t have to wait for your hosting company to get back to you and release the latest update they have on file, or pay an additional fee to use it.
On top of that, restoring your content quickly prevents you from losing customers or damaging their trust in you and your business.
Sometimes updates go wrong
On rare occasions, updating a single plugin or WordPress itself can cause major errors and site downtime. Without a backup, you could be looking at several days offline before your site is up and running again.
It gives you peace of mind
Finally, an offsite backup gives you peace of mind. You’ll always know that you can restore the latest version of your website no matter what happens to it.
If your backups are stored offsite, you’ll never have to worry about whether or not your host will give you access to backup files, or if they have the most recent version of your site available. With an offsite backup measure, you can easily schedule your own backups, and know they’ll be available right when you need them.
Back up your site with Jetpack
If you already use Jetpack, you probably know that it includes a lot of really valuable features. One of those features, included in all of Jetpack’s paid plans, is real-time backups.
Jetpack’s backups are stored on dedicated servers, so you never have to worry about losing access to your files if something were to happen to your site, your host, or even Jetpack itself. Our backup service also allows you to restore your site immediately with a single click.
With Jetpack, backups are performed in real-time — that is, every time a significant change is made to your site. We’ll back up changes to your WordPress database, plugins, themes, and uploads, as well as all of your site’s settings, users, and content.
If you ever need to restore your WordPress site, all you have to do is log in to your Jetpack dashboard. Jetpack will have the backup ready and waiting to be restored to your site so you can get back to work ASAP.
Never worry about your site again
Using Jetpack makes it possible to keep your site backed up outside of your host. It also makes it easy to restore all of your hard work if the worst ever happens.
Learn more about Jetpack’s backup features and give yourself peace of mind in knowing that your site can be restored at any time, from anywhere, with just a few clicks.
