Do you back up your own website? How long has it been since you backed it up? If you can’t remember, it may be time to rethink how you’re maintaining it.

Once your business website is built and the “hard” work is done, it’s easy to think that everything else can now run on automatic. Unfortunately, for small and large business owners alike, that’s not really the case. In today’s world of ever-evolving technology, security threats, and rapid-fire software changes, there will always be the need for ongoing website maintenance, which means there will always be a reason to back up your site.

Regardless of what business you’re in, if you use a website to reach and connect with your customers, losing it can be disastrous. All it takes is for one virus, one hacker, one crash or server meltdown to erase all of the coding and data that constitute your website. That’s the public face of your company, so if it disappears for some reason, you (quite literally!) lose face.

Here’s the Risk

Just think: In a matter of seconds, your business could go from a trustworthy service with a robust website with customer testimonials, service listings and offers, to de facto anonymity.

Sure, that’s not necessarily a security issue (unless, of course, you equate financial security with website security, which maybe you should!), but it’s definitely a customer service issue.

If it’s been awhile since you last backed up your site, it may be time to roll up your sleeves and git ‘er done.

What to Back Up

If you’re maintaining your website yourself and this is your first time backing it up, make sure that you back up both your database and all of your other files. (So, you’ll need everything: the core installation files, plugins, theme, JavaScript and PHP scripts, image files, and everything else.)

Basically, if you forget any little nugget of precious content or formatting information, you could end up with a website that is broken, missing information or only partially functional if you have to use your backup files to restore it. So, you want to make sure that you get everything.

How Often to Back Up

How often you should back up your site really depends on how dynamic your site is. For instance, a nice WordPress site that uses customized themes and plugins will need more frequent updating than a static website, but it also won’t benefit from incremental security updates and usability updates. (And, as any web designer or coder can tell you: incremental updates are much less painful and time-consuming in the long run.)

Regardless of what your site looks like or how it’s created, to be safe, you should back it up at least every time a change is made, whether that’s to the content, the design, or something behind the scenes. This, at least, will protect you from losing what you have.

If you don’t have the time or technical skills to back up your business website, we can help. As a full-service web design agency, we offer fully managed hosting and backup services for WordPress websites.

Look here for more information about our Milwaukee website hosting services or  fill out our contact form today to talk to someone about our services.