Web site backups, a security, recovery and assurance for web sites!

The most common situation if you have a web site is that you have published it at a hosting company. In this case the hosting company is responsible for the backup of the web site. Often your Internet Service Provider (ISP), the company which is responsible for your Internet connection offers you web site hosting capabilities. This is good if you want to publish just a personal home page. It's not good enough if you publish larger web site and you're working professionally.

You can also have your web sites published at your own server connected to the Internet. This form of web based publishing is not used often by publishers and small businesses as the cost is much bigger than to use a separate web hosting company. Web hosting is cheap!



Web site backups are an effective storage solution used to backup complete website and database securely onto DVD's, tapes or onto another hard disk. This provides external copy of the website files so that data can be restored quickly.

Website backups are created by the hosting companies and web site owners can contact their web site hosting company regarding website backups. You should check the backup policy used by the web hosting company before you subscribe to their service. Whenever possible, make also net site backup with backup software such as WinBackup of web site files from your hard disk and back them to a storage device or to DVD's connected to your computer.

Internet web based backups are created by:

1. Hosting companies to backup all the files and database relating to the various web sites hosted on their server.
2. Owner of the web sites. Keeping multiple copies of web backups at different locations provides a security against loss.

1. Servers at the hosting company i.e. hard disks of the server hosting company or on another hard disk used by hosting company at a separate remote location.
2. The site backups are burnt on tapes, CD or on as DVD backups.

1. Web pages
2. Images
3. Scripts
4. Access logs
5. Database backup

Access to a backup of the web site is just what is needed to get it up and running quickly if the website's content is lost, tampered with by outsiders or corrupted. Web site backups are used to restore the website quickly if a disaster occurs. DVD, CD, tapes and hard disk backups have a life span for many years.

Web hosting companies monitor the system status of the web sites remotely. If they see that the web sites goes down caused by disturbances over Internet or because of a hardware problem such as a hard disk crash they will take immediate recovery action. During crisis, web backups on on-line locations help the operator to bring up the web sites on to the Internet to minimize downtime and to avoid loss of customer’s databases, images and revenue.
As more companies depend on websites for a variety of business issues, web based backups have become more important. Finding the right company to take on this task is a way for you to secure and protect the investment you’ve made in that web site.
First and arguably foremost, businesses today use web sites to distribute information about a variety of topics related to their products and services. A web site may include the latest breaking news related to the business or offer sales pitches that are available day or night.

Keep in mind that many people prefer to shop online for many products today and you’ll find that there are web sites for almost anything you can imagine, from books to groceries. And it's available to anyone who wants to take time to look.

When that’s considered, it's no wonder that people will go to great lengths to find web sites dedicated to the products they know and love. When web sites are experience "technical difficulties," the potential for lost sales can be devastating.

Some companies provide secure web backups as part of an overall web based hosting package. You’ll find that the competition among web hosting companies is good for several reasons and cost is one of those. If you're not interested in a package deal, you may find a company that offers only backup services for a "per megabyte" price. This means that the smaller websites will be less costly to back up. The decision is entirely yours but you need to consider the amount of data information added on any single day and the value of that information.

If your web site is only updated periodically, you'll probably only need to back it up after the updates. Scheduling regular web backup will help you ensure that your information is always ready for the next customer.