There are many actions you can take to ensure the safety and security of your website. Selecting a good web host and using strong passwords are two such measures. However, the most crucial step a website owner can take for its security is performing website backups.
It is preferable to do a website backup early and often. When you have a recent backup of your website at all times, it helps you in many ways. For instance, if your website gets hacked or if you lose some crucial data, your backup can solve your problems in just a matter of minutes.
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
On top of that, it takes not more than a couple of minutes to prepare a website backup file.
7 Reasons For Creating a Backup For Your Website
Here are seven reasons why you need a website backup at all times.
1. Guard Your Website Against Human Error
We as human beings also make mistakes from time to time. For example, we might click the ‘Delete’ button by mistake to remove a file from the system that we actually need to use. We might make a change in a file that breaks or harms some of its functionality. We need ways to fix these kinds of mistakes. In our experience, we cannot usually restore a previous backup of a file or a webpage as efficiently as a computer.
Imagine that a web page or a section of your website stops functioning suddenly to understand this better. You can solve this in two ways.
- Identify the exact problem, its cause, and try to solve it.
- Restore the most recent website backup that you have, and move on.
The first way can consume a lot of time, depending on how severe the error is. But the second method will get your website up and running very quickly. All you need is a website backup that is recent enough to restore most of your work, except for the error you made.
You can take away from this because website backups save your time, energy, and probably even money in various situations where you or somebody else makes a mistake on your website. To be the safest, you need to set up your website backups to happen frequently, at short intervals, perhaps daily.
2. Reverse the Problems Caused By Updates
Sometimes, you might face an error on your website that is caused due to an automatic update. Updates are important to keep your website functioning properly. You cannot ignore these updates altogether. But if you see something on your site unexpectedly go wrong, right after an update is performed, it means you should have made those changes more safely and differently.
There’s usually an automatic website backup plan or system in place. In that case, if any of your website’s key components are updated, a recent backup file or restore point will be available for you. Creating a backup manually is also wise for handling such situations.
It will usually just take you a few moments or longer to get the website backup ready. But you’ll be glad that you did it when anything goes wrong with the site during its update process.
3. Prevent Loss of Data
If you are running a blog and have hundreds of articles published on it, you might want to keep frequent website backups to prevent data loss. Imagine someone in your team mistakenly deletes one or more of your posts. It can even happen that someone deletes an entire library of content from your blog by mistake. Maybe they don’t know what they are doing or accidentally gave certain users too many privileges.
Image taken from Strikingly
Your website backup files will help you save the day in such instances. You need to keep a complete backup of your site to resolve such issues. The same is true for keeping your personal data safe.
At times, you might lose data even when there is no error or mistake made by a human. Therefore, even if you and your team are well equipped with the skills to maintain your website and know what you are doing, you still need to have a website backup system.
4. Handle Compatibility Issues
If you are using WordPress or some other Content Management System (CMS) to run your website, you would probably be relying on too many add-ons. You might be using add-ons for website themes, plugins, or other things. All these tools are convenient, but when you install these every time, you introduce a risky element that might not be compatible enough with the rest of your website’s system.
Therefore, installing these plugins could cause a similar problem as that caused by a website update. But that doesn’t mean you need to avoid using plugins and themes altogether. It just means that before installing them, go through the reviews to make sure they work correctly and their developers update them regularly.
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
It is also preferable to have a website backup just before you activate a new plugin or theme. This will ensure you have a file ready to backup, just in case, something goes wrong with your site due to the new tool you add. If you face compatibility issues with the new plugin, all you’ll need to do is revert to the last backup.
5. Resolve Malware Infections
Malware infections are perceived as something that only affects personal computers. But in reality, many websites are impacted by dangerous malware, and many more are vulnerable to some kind of malware.
Being more proactive about your website security is good, but that doesn’t make it totally safe from attackers. Hackers and attackers use highly sophisticated techniques to harm websites. Even tiny and insignificant websites are not entirely safe from such attacks. For example, basic WordPress websites often face threats from bots looking for website vulnerabilities to exploit.
It is not easy to troubleshoot such malware. It is even hard to figure out when your website is fully clean and safe. Also, if you cannot identify the exact security loophole that caused the infection, your website will remain vulnerable to such attacks in the future. Therefore, the best way to go about this is to keep a recent website backup at all times. That will help you clean up your site faster in such instances.
6. Protect Against Hackers
Who doesn’t want to protect their website against hackers? Of course, we all do. Attackers usually access your website directly for defacing it or stealing important data. For example, if a hacker manages to breach your account with administrative privileges, they might quickly change the login credentials, and you’ll get locked out of your site.
To prevent this from happening, you need to correct security precautions. One such safeguard is to have two-factor authentication turned on for your site. If someone still hacks your site, you can do one of the following.
- Try to recover your access through email.
- Contact the web hosting provider and ask for their assistance.
- Restore a website backup by accessing your hosting panel.
The first method will sometimes work and sometimes not. The hacker could be smart enough to quickly change the admin email as well. If you are working with a good web host, the hosting company might help you out. But the process will take time.
Creating a backup and restoring it, on the other hand, will allow you to regain control and access to your website very quickly. Once you have access, you can update the login credentials quickly to avoid getting again locked out by the hackers.
7. Simplify the Migration of Web Hosts
You might face a situation where you need to migrate your website to a different web host. This means you would need to move all the files on your website from one server to another. Before doing that, it is beneficial to have the most recent website backup in place.
There are different ways of creating a backup for your complete website right before its migration to another host. You can use tools dedicated for this purpose or copy all the files manually, or even ask the new service provider to do the job for you. Either way, having a website backup would mean you can change your web host at just a moment’s notice without risking anything.
Creating a Backup For Your Strikingly Website
Strikingly currently does not have the feature to allow you to create a website backup. Thus we encourage our users to clone their websites. By doing that, you can have a copy of your main site safe with you.
Image taken from Strikingly
To clone your Strikingly website, go to your dashboard. Select the site that you want to copy, and click ‘Clone’. That’s really all you need to do. Your new replicated site will appear right above the one that you cloned. It will have ‘Copy’ written at the end of its title and its own default URL.
If you want to build a website on Strikingly, you can start by registering for a free account with us by filling out the form on our landing page. Don’t forget to clone your site on a regular basis, as that would serve as a website backup for you. Just like keeping an extra tire for your car always helps, creating a backup or a clone of your website can become a lifesaving situation if you incur a security incident. Whether you want to protect your site from attackers or detect if someone has gained unauthorized access to your data, you can use a backup or a clone to instantly take back control of your site.
