Are you backing up your website?
Cause lemme tell ya, you should be!
Your website is too important for you not to be backing it up. Plus, it actually saves you time if something were to happen to your site. You don’t want to have to spend hours trying to fix it or spend money on having your designer fix it for you.
Take one of my previous clients. She wanted to make a simple change to her website and change the size of her logo in her footer. But, whatever she did, she ended up changing the layout of the entire page. All of a sudden I’m getting rapid-fire SOS text messages, which is understandable. It’s every client’s worst nightmare – “OMG did I break my site?!”
My first question was, “Okay don’t panic, did you back up the site before you went in to make changes?” (Something I always recommend to my clients, no matter how small the change)
“Ummmm….”
That’s a no 😜 Which, again, is understandable! If you’re not a web designer, backing up your site is not something that just pops into your mind – you’re focused on completing the task at hand: updating your site.
Which is why I’m here, writing this blog, reminding you to always back up your site before making changes.
If you’re DIYing your changes/updates, it’s always better to be safe than sorry and back up every time. There’s always a chance you could accidentally mess up something, which is nothing to be ashamed of, but you should take the proper precautions.
Luckily for my client, I was able to get into her site and fix the error in no time at all. But, not backing up your site is a lesson you do not want to learn the hard way; trust me!
If you’re on WordPress, my favorite way to back up your site is with the Updraft Plus plugin. (For more of my favorite WP plugins, check out this post.) The setup is super easy and user-friendly. In addition, you can send backups to external storage to keep them safe; I use google drive.
Okay, say it with me, “From now on, I will always back up my site before I make any changes.”
It’s also a good idea to run regular, routine backups just in case something goes wonky with your site. You can set this is up automatically in updraft plus so you don’t even have to think about it!
Now go download updraft plus & set up your backups! And if you have any trouble, please feel free to reach out!
Come hang out with me on instagram for more website tips + tricks!
