[FAQ]

Hello,

I had a bit of a scare yesterday when my site was down for an hour. It was quite stressful! It turned out to be a server issue that my host fixed, but it made me realize I don’t really have a backup plan if something worse happens, like if I get hacked or accidentally break something.

I know I should be backing up my site, but how often is enough? Daily? Weekly? My site is a small e-commerce store, so we get new orders and I sometimes update products every day.

Also, what’s the best way to do it? I see my host has a backup tool, but should I also keep a copy myself? I’m not very technical, so I’m looking for a method that is reliable but not too complicated.

Thank you for any advice.

[Jeff Bullas]

Smart move to get on top of this now rather than after a disaster.

Short Answer: For an active e-commerce site, you need daily automated backups at a minimum, and the best method involves storing complete copies of both your website files and your database in a separate, off-site location.

A reliable backup strategy is your ultimate insurance policy against data loss, so redundancy is key.

Your backup strategy needs to cover three essential areas. First, the frequency of your backups should match how often your site’s content changes; since you’re running an e-commerce store with daily orders, you must take daily backups to avoid losing crucial transaction and customer data. Second, you must back up both distinct components of your site: the files, which include your theme, plugins, and all your media content like images and videos, and the database, which stores all the text from your pages, posts, and most importantly, your product and order information. Finally, the best and most reliable method is to have your backups automatically sent to a secure, off-site cloud storage location, which ensures you have a copy that is completely independent of your web host in case of a server-wide failure. Simply relying on your host’s default backup without your own off-site copy is a significant risk.

Cheers,
Jeff

[Author]

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