Website backups are a must for any website owner. Without a backup, you could lose everything if your site is hacked or deleted due to an error on the server.
Thankfully, there are many ways to back up your website, and this article will go over eight of the most common mistakes that people make when doing so:
1. Forgetting To Back Up Your Site Regularly
One of the most common mistakes people make regarding website backups is forgetting to back up their site regularly. Many people only back up their site when they think something might go wrong, which is not often enough.
Ideally, you should be backing up your site daily to have a recent backup to restore if something happens.
2. Storing Your Backups In A Place With No Security
Another common mistake is storing your backups in a place with no security. If your backups are hacked or stolen, you could lose everything. Instead, you should store your backups in a secure location where they will be safe from thieves and hackers.
3. Using Only One Type Of Backup Method
Another mistake that people make is using only one type of backup method. This can be risky because you will lose everything if something happens to your backups.
Instead, you should use various backup methods so that your data will still be backed up if one method fails.
4. Updating Backups Over Time
Another mistake that people need to fix is updating their backups over time. This means that if you restore a backup from two months ago, it may not be up-to-date with the current version of your website.
Ideally, you should only be restoring backups that are less than a week old so that they are always up-to-date.
5. Choosing The Wrong Backup Medium
Another common mistake is choosing the wrong backup medium for your website, whether using only one type of storage media or picking a medium that does not support backups.
You should use various storage media types to back up your data so that if something happens to one kind, you will still have your information safe and sound.
6. Formatting Your Data Backup
Another common mistake is formatting your data backup to save space without verifying that everything is backed up properly.
This means that essential files may have been accidentally deleted from the backup during reformatting due to an error.
7. Not Testing Your Backups
Another mistake that people make is not testing their backups before using them.
This makes it likely that information will be lost when you try to restore your site with an untested backup due to the data needing to be transferred correctly during restoration.
You should test your backups regularly to catch any potential errors and fix them before restoring them.
8. Choosing The Wrong Backup Frequency
The final common mistake many website owners make is choosing the wrong frequency for their backups (such as never or every six months).
This means they may lose everything if there is a problem with their files resulting in all of their data being deleted from the server.
It’s essential to ensure you’re doing everything correctly when backing up your website.
Take some time now and review this list of common errors that many people make, as well as what steps you can take to avoid them to ensure a successful backup process for your site.