Don't Gamble With Your Website - Have you backed up lately?

bymarycmiller

1.9K followers

Updated 6 years ago

Backing up your websites is an important task to do on a regular basis, and even more so with the upcoming change in Wordpress to the new Gutenberg Editor. Backing up is a very simple process and it only takes a couple of minutes. The problem that I find, is remembering to do it on a regular time frame. Often I will wake in the night and think, must back up my websites tomorrow. Don't ask why my brain works in that way, it just does. However, come morning I totally forget the heed of the night before.

Make a Special Time - Set a Reminder

I am trying to turn over a new leaf and become organized. Now to many who know me, they simply shrug their shoulders with a little laugh, they have witnessed many previous attempts of my organizing. But it is different this time, with the help of my cellphone and Alexa by my side I am setting reminders for the many little life tasks that I usually forget. One such reminder is backing up all my files, including my website. I am titling mine "Back Up Sunday"!

Let me tell you the pain from experience, as a photographer, we all know the importance of backing up. We may know the importance, but we don't always pay attention to our own advice. I had one such experience, my working hard drive quit, never to start again. Yep you guessed it, 3 years of photography stuck. Tears, tears and more tears and some $300 dollars later a genius recovered 2 thirds of my files, I was lucky. So don't let this happen to you.

Backing Up - So Important & So Simple

https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/training/how-to-back-up-your...

Above is a link to one of Kyle's videos, it explains everything you need to know, so take a few minutes and watch the video, then back-up - back-up - back-up. You will feel like you have done a days' maintenance when you have complete the all important task.

Kyle suggests 2 things, having a dedicated file for your back-up and recording the name of your theme. I will give you a quick and clean file system I use and it will have everything in one neat little package.

1. Create a folder - I called mine Affiliate Website Backups
2. Inside create folders for each of your websites
3. Inside the specific website folder create a folder and name it the date you are backing up and the theme you used example mine today was Apr22_18_Notebook
4. When backing up (according to video) save and place the file in the dated and theme name file.
   
5. This seems like a lot of folders, however, when working in multiples down the road it will be easier to see exactly which backup you are looking for (usually last date) and theme used.

Now you can create any type of filing, I always suggest one that is easiest for you to remember, but the example I have given you you, is one I use in photography because I am dealing with multiple clients, and multiple events, so I need something very specific so that I can find what I am looking for in an instance.

One Final Suggestion

Since loosing a third of all the photographs I had taken in a 3-year period, I now have a 2 stage system for backing up. I have my working external hard drive, all my files go there including all back ups. Then I have a back up external hard drive in which I store the duplicate files from my first external (working) hard drive. This back up drive is the safety net of the system, if my working drive goes down, at least I know that my files are safe. That is true only if I remember to do the back up in the first place.