Top Website Backup Methods for Website Owners and Developers
Web Development
We spend a lot of money, resources, and time behind the website development, deployment, maintenance, and marketing. The web development, Maintenance and deployment might be a one-time process but running the site and earning from it remains to continue forever.
Technically, the website is running on the web servers seldom located within premise or always located at remote places in the third party hosting providers’ premises. Moreover, cloud hosting keeps copies of your website in multiple locations across the world.
The hosting infrastructure like hardware, software, and networking facilities are never absolutely free of natural or human-made disasters or calamities. Therefore, chances are high to lose the website source code, databases, and other resources from the running status.
To mitigate such unexpected losses, you must have the latest backup of your website when anything unwanted occurs. Apart from the apparent reason to take website backup, there are other reasons those we should count when we are going to favor the website backup by spending a good deal of amount on backup methods and services available online.
Why Website Backup Is Essential
We count following hardcore reasons to lean on website backup decisions.
#1: Web Hosts Hardly Take Website Backup Responsibility Seriously:
Many web hosts are refrain from taking backup to save some storage spaces and creating a separate unit for the safe backup. They announce website backup in their brochures, but hardly implement it in reality. If they do so, it is the just sake of the own safety and security in the eyes of local and international laws.
#2: You Must Store the Latest Version of the Website with All Essential Resources
Many web developers think that they have a master copy in their local storage or server for development and it is enough as a backup. Unfortunately, today websites are dynamic and interactive so tons of user-generated content is in the running copy of websites that may not be available in the master copy on the local server.
For instance, Forum, Blog, CRM, and like integrations always consisting of user-generated content, which is needing the latest copy of the websites to take backups & restoration when anything unwanted happens with websites.
#3: Quick or Automated Restore Is Mandatory
With
a dynamic website, users are always hurried and impatient if your web server is down for a while. If you have up to date backup in place and quick restoration capability, you can minimize the losses happening due to website downtime or any mishap on hosting side.
For instance, Amazon had experienced billions of dollar loss when its cloud hosting failed for some hours only.
#4: Consider Online Security Reasons to Take Website Backup
Online threats are on rising, and web servers are not spared from it. Despite virus protection measures, malware precautions, and complaints with security standards, potential attacks are reported in hosting industry.
In such conditions, secure backup is a good solution to restore the websites and web services quickly without any disturbance.
#5: Take Website Backup For The Sake of the Peace of Mind
Web developers, webmasters, and website owners are always anxious regarding their website code, data, and resources. When you say they have a solid backup available to restore the functioning of their websites or web applications within a fraction of a moment, they may relieve and have peace of mind with an efficient backup solution.
Best Website Backup Strategies
As discussed earlier, the dynamic nature of modern websites require website backups daily, not weekly or monthly. With the lapse of time, data of old backup become obsolete and compel webmasters to take back strategy seriously and define a backup schedule considering the nature and traffic of the websites in question.
To formulate a smart backup strategy, you should consider following things first.
Define the Priorities in Backup: In most of the cases, databases are on top of the list to take more frequent backups.
Define Backup Retention Policy: It is true that we cannot keep all versions of backup for a longer period due to storage and management limitations. Therefore, we have to define when backup storage should be purged.
Define Backup Size: As discussed before, we cannot keep all versions of backups and all data involved in backup after a certain period. Therefore, we need to define the size of backup and data depending on the type/method and medium of backup.
Define Backup Method or Type: Based on other strategies described above, you must select the most appropriate method or a combination of methods to take your website backup considering your budget and significance of backup data.
3-2-1 Backup Strategy:
3 – Keep three copies of all essential source code and files. For instance, if you are taking a daily backup, take thrice in a day and the next morning when you take 4
th copy, purge the first one and so on.
2 – Take backup copy in two different formats. For instance, one in primary server and one in external cloud server to save from the online threats.
1 – Store one backup copy in the off-site format to save backup from the physical threats or disaster.
Types of Website Backup Methods
Thus, our next task is to know the different types of backup methods so we can select the most appropriate one/s for our
website backup service and spend relaxed moments.
No.1: Full or Normal Backup
In this method, we are copying all files and folders from the original site of the website, i.e. from the hosting server to the backup location. In due course, developers take backup of the entire site and all resources attached to it.
File and folders are compressed and backed up in the normal
backup website to save disk space as well as allow incremental or differential
backup method implementation.
No.2: Incremental Backup
The full backup only takes place once and at the first time. For the next time backup, we are overwriting the copies with the latest and changed versions of the files of websites, so it becomes incremental backup by nature.
Thus, incremental backup saves time and bandwidth resources against the full backup method. Therefore, smart webmasters always prefer incremental backup method once the full backup has taken place.
We need incremental backup thanks to ever-changing nature of our dynamic and interactive websites. Otherwise, static websites hardly need any incremental backup due to their unchanging nature.
No.3: Differential Backup
It is almost the same as the incremental backup, but differing when the backup of only modified or newly created files and folders are overwriting on the first full backup, not the last incremental backup.
Therefore, differential backup has taken place only certain circumstances, not in routine schedules.
No.4: Mirror Backup
We know files and folders are compressed in full backup method, but in the case of mirror backup, no compression is implemented at all and keep the data intact. In the absence of compression, you cannot think of the implementation of incremental and differential methods on the mirror backup.
Conclusion:
After the detailed study of different website backup methods, we have to select the most appropriate one for our websites or web applications. To do so we have to look at the online website backup service providers offering different packages and backup methods to address diverse needs of the industry.
If you think of some helping hands in this regard, you need to consult the experienced and expert team of web developers or
a web development company, which is offering the consultancy services.
We would like to recommend an eminent outsourcing web development company, named Addon Solutions. You can enjoy their web consultancy services free of any charge prior to starting your project or once you finished up the development of deployment of your website using their team.
The website maintenance packages at Addon Solutions involves the
website backup responsibility, and
the team of web developers offers righteous guidance in this regard.