If you couldn’t understand the Chinese characters in the title, that’s okay, neither can your customers or clients when your website gets hacked. This is just one of the reasons that it is incredibly important to make sure that your website is equipped with automatic backups that save to cloud storage (i.e. Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.). There are more reasons than just hacks that should cause you to make sure that daily/weekly backups are a part of your website’s maintenance process.
Here are the top 3 reasons that you want to be sure that your website is being backed up regularly:
- Broken Code, Theme or Plug-In
Anytime a WordPress or plug-in update rolls out, there is the potential for your website to break. Having regular backups for your website ensures that when this happens, you can roll the website files and/or database back to a point where it was working normally and choose not to implement the update(s) until a more stable version of the CMS (Content Management System) or plug-in has been released. - Hacks
As mentioned before, having your website hacked is not fun and requires a lot of untangling of code and deleting files…IF you don’t have regularly occurring website backups. By having a backup of your website’s files and database prior to a hack, you are able to roll back your site to that point in time and make necessary updates to prevent another hack in the future.If your website does experience a hack, remember that after you roll back to a working backup you should always double-check that any hacked pages are not showing up in Google search results. If they are you will need to resubmit your website through Google Search Console to have it recrawled and you may possibly need to request that the hacked links be removed from Google’s index. - Oops
Yes, mistakes happen. Even for people who are only producing content or posting to a blog. It is easy to accidentally delete or edit content in a way that you wish you could go back to the original and start over. Call in the backup.
Basically, having backups of your website is like the old Nintendo games where after you completed a level you would get the passcode for that point in the game. If you died from that point forward, you always had that code to enter to restart where you left off instead of restarting the game from the beginning. Nowadays you don’t have to have the passcode. Most video games will automatically save your progress and when you die you start over at that restore point. With automatic website backups, it works the same way. Anytime your website experiences an update gone wrong, poorly written or broken code errors, hacks or even the occasional “oops,” you’re covered.
Keeping regularly scheduled backups of your website files and database don’t just allow you to pick up at a better point in the life of your website. They also save you time, money and stress. Rest at ease knowing that if anything happens to your website, you are covered.
If you do not know how to add automated website backups to your website, reach out to us at the Thrivetime Show or your web developer to help set them up. Stop worrying and start backing up!
