By Brian Christie
Works ≠done (the backup edition)
Your site is live. It’s running. It hasn’t crashed. So backups feel like overkill, right up until a plugin update breaks the database, or a hack wipes your content, or your host has an outage and doesn’t have your data either. Then backups are the only thing that matters.
What most people assume their host does
1. Daily automatic backups, stored somewhere safe, easily restorable with one click. What most budget hosts actually provide: weekly backups at best, stored on the same server as the site (so if the server dies, the backup dies with it), restorable only through a support ticket that takes 48 hours.
2. That’s not a backup strategy, that’s a hope strategy.
What a real backup looks like
1. Daily, automatic, no manual step required.
2. Stored off-site (not on the same server your site runs on).
3. Restorable in minutes, not days, by you, without waiting on support.
4. Includes both files and database, not just one or the other.
The cost of not having one
Rebuilding a site from scratch after a total loss costs thousands and weeks. A proper backup solution costs $5-15/month. This is held together with tape and hope until you replace the hope with an actual system.
Want daily backups handled without thinking about it? That’s part of our website care plans.
