Your Backups Can Tell How Much You Value Your Website

Around 6 months ago, I was tasked to build an e-commerce site for a client who said it was their first website and they were going to focus on it as their *only* business. Everything went well, from constructing what they wanted up to uploading and setting up the site. Eventually my client’s website became a successful local online business.

This morning, I’ve had that client email me and they were frantic about their current situation. The told me their site was showing database errors and their web host couldn’t resolve the issue. They asked if I could do anything to help — I took a quick look at the db and for some strange reason it seems they had lost all their data! Unfortunately I couldn’t restore anything as I obviously don’t have a copy of the website’s latest working database.

I feel sorry for my client, really… but apart from the host not being helpful and not keeping any “automatic backups,” my client’s the one who’s at fault here. They didn’t keep any recent backups, heck they never even generated a single backup of the site.

Always remember that it’s your responsibility to keep updated backups of your websites and other files. If your website is that important to you, you should always have a copy of your full account backup stored somewhere else other than your web host’s servers. This can be your computer, a secure online storage service, etc. If you think you don’t have the time to do this, at least hire someone else to do it for you or use a paid automatic backup solution.