When will webmasters ever learn.  I am sure most if not all did rely on the webhost for the backups.  It appears that the host involved here has admitted that they have a problematic backup solution they are working on that should have served as a reminder or warning to all website owners to keep and save their backups.  Not until this disaster happened that they come to realize it.

And when you review the host’s TOS, you will see that it is not at all responsible for any loss of websites.  Scary isn’t it.  People do not read the fine print so they get caught at the time they need to read the legal talk.  Too bad for all those folks affected.

See forum post here.

Website Hosting Guide - How to Switch Your Web Host With Zero Down Time

One of the scariest problems that we have with our website is the drop of performance. This often happens when your website needs greater service in places like storage or bandwidth. During this kind of situation, there is no need for panic because we can simply switch from one hosting to another hosting. There are no worries when you think of this procedure because the internet is very powerful at redirecting the websites. All you have to do is select which sort of package you need so that you website will have a better performance, no downtime and it will be virtually be ready in your new hosting in just one day.

Before you start the switch from the old host to the new one, you should backup all your information and files. Ensure that you have everything backup because all the files that you backup will be the content of your website with the new hosting. You should also backup the database from the old website. Make sure you even backup the database which is still under testing as well. To be extra sure of your content, you should make a list of all the files that you have backup o paper so that you have a written record. It is better to take precaution so that you will be able to know the location of the files when you want o find it. Details like passwords, login is very important. Therefore, make sure you have all the information.

You can keep you backup data in storage or you could even have it place in a CD or DVD. This is a safety measure taken so that you have the backup even when your website has totally gone crazy. The new host which you register will provide you with a domain name server. So, it is most likely that you will get 2 DNS for you to redirect you website. You must remember this DNS because this combination is the key to connect to your new website. Just write it down to be safe.

Next, you will probably have to make a duplicate of the email account on your new hosting. This configuration is simple but make sure that you record all the required details like username, SMTP server, pop server, IMAP server and the ports that they are using. The port is important because most of the host will usually change the port for the use of the email.

Once you have settled everything with the new host, all you have left to do next is to upload all you backed up files on to the new host. You should have your new folders copied over he old ones. It is up to you to keep you files organize and similar to the structure of the old website. This will help you to maintain so that you won’t run into confusion state with all the information overloading in you mind. Having said that, bear in mind that the old website is actually still running. The only things is when people go to your website, it will be redirected to your new website in the new host.

After all your data is copied, you must create a replication of any database that is created in the old website. The idea is like making a mirror of the old website on to the new website. When we enter the new DNS address into the old website’s setting, everything will be seamless. Therefore, we need everything on the new host to be as close as possible to the one in the old host. When this is done, you will have all of your data backed up. You will also have the new DNS server address to each your website on the new host. The database on your new host is also created with the same information as the database on the old host. Now, you are ready to put up a notice in your website using the old host notifying your visitors that you are currently updating the website. Also inform that any errors are temporary as your system will be back up running in not time.

Now is the time to point your old website to the new website in the new host. You must find you DNS settings in the control panel of the web host. Proceed to enter the new web host’s DNS primary address and DNS2 as the secondary. You should be able to find your DNS easily in the control panel. If you face any problems, please contact the administrator of the web host company and they will be able to assist you in this matter.
After you entered the new DNS server address, it will usually take up to 24 hours for the DNS to work out in the internet. In this time-length, there is a probability that your website will go down. Usually for around 5 to 10 minutes at most. If you are lucky, you won’t experience any downtime at all.

So, after completing all the procedures, you have successfully transferred you website from the old host to the new host. Once the DNS completely resolves, you can proceed with the demolition of your old website.

Many who search for web hosting will come to the big name in web hosting - Bluehost. At the time of writing, their web hosting plan offers unlimited bandwidth and disk storage space with less than $7 per month.

Sure, the offer sounds like a great bargain! But is Bluehost recommended? Review Bluehost web hosting service and compare them with other major web host at BlueHostSecretRevealed.com.

Article by Phil Anderson.

Website Hosting Guide - How to Switch Your Web Host With Zero Down Time

Foreword:

DO you know how to backup your webites?  More often than not, webmasters (especially those who are less than one year in the website management process) often ignore this very important tasks.  There are many simple ways to backup your websites actually but many people as well forget to do it.  If you want to get to secure your website’s future, then backups are your best insurance.  Backup your websites today.  Here is how you can do it……

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How To Backup Your Website

Backups - it seems like they’re not worth doing, until your hard drive or server crashes or you are hacked and you need to restore your data. In this article, I’ll show you how it can be a painless process.

Server Backup

You need to backup your website online. Sure, you might have a copy of all the text content somewhere else but it will be very difficult and time consuming to re-upload it if the worst comes to the worst.

Also, let me just say now that you should never rely on your hosting company to restore your data. Many hosting companies do not take backups of your data simply because it is not in your contract and they are not obliged to do so. Make your own backups and don’t rely on them.

Files

The first thing you need to backup is your files. There are a couple ways to do this. One is to FTP all your files from your host to your own computer. The other way is to run a backup job on your server - this is normally done through your control panel - for instance, cpanel has a backup option. Then you can download a zip file to your hard disk.

Databases

If you website consists of static files that you normally upload by FTP then you don’t need to worry about this stage. But many people now are using a CMS like Wordpress or Joomla. If this is the case, then you need to also back up your databases. Whatever you configure your databases in your control panel, there should be an option to back up the database. In fact, your CMS may even have a plugin that allows you to do it from there.

Otherwise, if you have something like cpanel, then you can download databases individually or as part of the “full backup” I described above.

If there is a disaster then you can restore the databases. This is quite easy and you just use the “import” database function in your control panel and point it to your backup.

Chris Smith makes a lot of money from the internet. Want to make some money too? Then enroll on his ecourse at http://www.ProfitsWithChris.com to start making money today.

Foreword:

CPanel is a very powerful hosting control panel.  It has tons of features, easy to use and most of all, is being used by many web hosting companies worldwide.  As with other softwares, the tons of features overwhelms the user.  Instead of doing the basic stuffs, website owners are getring pre-occupied with so many cool stuff that CPanel has to offer.  But the most powerful of all is the CPanel backup feature that has been left out by many websmasters.  To get an overview of what CPanel is all about and what it can do for you, please read the article below…

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The Power Of CPanel

cPanel is a control panel for your website and allows you to set up and manage your web account through a graphical interface instead of having to use command line. This means that you can make changes to your website without having to learn to use a command line environment. There are a variety of control panels out there, most offering a graphical interface and granting access to email management, FTP, subdomain administration, website statistics, etc. With a control panel, you can add/remove email accounts or view disk usage and statistics for your site by clicking on a shortcut and entering the appropriate information.

cPanel is the leading control panel on the market today. The two other big players in the control panel arena are Plesk and Ensim.

Ensim offers a variety of features and four levels of administration: appliance owner, reseller, site owner and user account owner. Ensim is the second most used control panel and compares well with cPanel, but its interface can sometimes be difficult to navigate and can be confusing to the users.

Plesk is reputed to be very stable, which is a desirable feature if you have important information which requires extreme stability. Plesk also provides more support for automation and has a large variety of plug-ins to increase its available features. On the down side, like Ensim, Plesk’s user interface is harder to use than that of cPanel. It also does not contain as many features as cPanel.

With its stylish design, user-friendly interface and rich features, cPanel remains one of the most popular control panels on the market. It’s easy to navigate with the icon-based menu and it provides all the tools necessary to manage your website.

Below is a selection of the features available in cPanel:

Mail

· Add and remove email accounts

· Set up email forwarding, mailing lists and auto-responders

· Web mail allows you to read and compose emails anywhere in the world

FTP Manager

· Set up FTP accounts

· Set up anonymous FTP access

· FTP session control

File Manager

The File Manager basically replaces an FTP program and allows you to upload files to and download files from your website. It is a stand-alone file management program with a graphical interface.

Backup

You can backup and restore your website at a click.

Sub-domains

cPanel allows you to create and manage sub-domains. Sub-domains can be used for many different purposes, including hosting friends or clients.

Raw Log Manager

You can choose how raw logs are stored on your account.

Raw Access Log

You can download the raw access logs for any domain in your account. This information is useful for tracking user movements.

Error Log

The error log displays all the “404 File does not exist” errors so you can find out what files are missing from your website.

MySQL Databases

If you use MySQL databases for your website, you will have the ability to manage all your databases with this option.

Agora Shopping Cart

You can install Agora Shopping Cart on your website. This is a powerful shopping cart system which will allow you to start your own ecommerce website.

There are many more useful features available in cPanel. With such a rich variety of features, it’s no wonder that cPanel is the most used control panel. So make sure that your hosting company offers cPanel before signing up. For more information about cPanel, visit www.frontierpowerhosting.com

Matt Bacak became “#1 Best Selling Author” in just a few short hours. Recent Entrepreneur Magazine’s e-Biz radio show host is turning Authors, Speakers, and Experts into Overnight Success Stories. Discover The Secrets To Unleash The Powerful Promoter In You! Sign up for Matt Bacak’s Promoting Tips Ezine ($100 value) just visit his website at http://www.powerfulpromoter.com or http://promotingtips.com

The Power Of CPanel

Foreword:

Data Back-Up in Web Hosting Industry

Data is very important in any business whether it is online or offline. Data stored in your server cannot be lost as it puts a full stop to your business. If you lose data then you have to spend a lot money, time and effort to replace them. In some critical applications it is not even easy to replace the data. Hence a wise decision is to find some ways to retain your data. This is where Back-up comes into picture.

Data back-up is a process in which you save your valuable data to some remote server or in some media which can be used to restore them back when you need it. You may face situations in which you application becomes corrupt or your data file is corrupted. Intentional damage, natural disasters, and hardware failure are some of the other situations which makes your lose your data. During such situations you can use the data that is backed up in your remote server to restore.

A periodic backup is necessary so that you do not lose much data when a contingency occurs. Data backup in web hosting industry is common and is also a must, since they face a lot of contingencies mentioned above. With ever increasing viruses and worms you may not when you will lose your data. Hence taking backup of your data is a must in these days.

Any web hosting account that you purchase also comes up with a comprehensive backup scheme that can be used to backup the important data that you might have in the server. If you have a site that has many users (members), then it is important that you also backup the data of your users also. Under such situations it is better to backup the site data and the users’ data separately so that you can restore which ever you want.

A backup can be incremental or full backup. Full backup is to take a backup of all the data available in the site, whereas the incremental backup is to take a backup of the data that has changed since the last backup. It takes a lot of time and space to take a full backup of your site. Backup is taken usually in the tar format or the .gz format. Taking backups in these formats saves a lot of space and time.

Most of the web hosting services provides a backup plan which could be monthly, weekly, or daily basis. The data thus backed up is stored offline on a secure server. Some services charge you for the backup services provided by them. Some of the hosting providers provide you the necessary tools to take a backup so that you can schedule backup on your own. If your site has critical data then hourly backup can also be sought after. Such exclusive backups are charged by the hosting provider.

Hence taking a backup of the important data and the site is important in the web hosting industry so that the website can be restored in the minimum time with minimum interruption to the users.

Author recommends web hosting provided by Marble Host. Marble Host offers daily data back-up and 99.9% uptime guarantee. Visit http://www.marblehost.com for more information.

Data Back-Up in Web Hosting Industry

Backup, Backup and Backup all Your CPanel Websites

This simple reminder is dedicated to all Webmasters (and Webslaves like me). Don’t sleep tonight without reading this. Find out why below…

Have you seen people cried out loud for help because they lost their websites?

I have seen this many times in several forums and have personally experienced the same not long ago. I am a living testimony on this one.

And so I cried out for “Help!” I lost my websites!”

But no one can help me… Sad but true…

I faced mounting problems that escalates each day as I am rebuilding my websites. Lost sales, lost customers, lost files and lost hairs (it’s very stressful you know).

If it did not happen to you just yet, good for you. Otherwise, you already know how painful it is to wake up in the morning just to see your website was wiped out on the face of the internet.

Scary eh?

Webmasters lose their websites for variety of reasons. This may be due to either one or the combination of the following:

1) Server hardware breakdowns or failures

2) Datacenter disasters (fires, electrical, etc)

3) Software updates and failures

4) Hacking and malicious intents

5) Transfer or server movement problems

6) Your webhost human errors

7) Your own human errors

Other accidents I might have missed

Except for your own mistakes (admit it, nobody’s perfect) from time to time, all the other reasons are beyond your control. And it’s not good news.

It’s a good thing that you NOW know that it’s not a question of “IF” it will happen to you. It’s just a matter of “WHEN” disaster will strike YOU.

- Are you ready for this?

- Can you deal with the consequences and trauma?

- Is your website insured if disaster falls today?

Luckily, most of us know the solution but we keep on ignoring this. Admit it. I know.

The only way to really have peace of mind is to do one simple thing… Just ONE simple thing…

Backup!

Backup!

Backup!

Most of us knew this all along but we don’t do it.

Are we crazy? Nope. We are just busy.

We are so busy online we don’t have time for this simple thing. No challenge eh?

But you see, this is your ONLY true insurance from the shaky internet platforms and uncontrollable mishaps.

You can’t just rely on someone to do this for you.

- Not with your web host.

- Not your programmer.

- Not your website designer.

- Not even your Mom!

YOU, the website owner should do this for yourself.

BACKUP. That simple.

I pray that you will not be stricken with this sad online tragedy. Because I really can’t help you even if you email me a million times for help.

Remember, accidents strike when you least expect it. (Or it will not be called accidents right?)

So don’t forget to BACKUP your websites from time to time. And your vital files in your computer too.

You’ll have peace of mind and I tell you, that’s a great and wonderful feeling.

Backup, Backup and Backup all Your CPanel Websites

Foreword:

If you are like many long-time webmasters, you probably have lost a website either via a hosting problem or your own errors or problems.  More often than not, lost website is very hard to recover or replace especially those that are active and database-driven websites.  Lost website is your responsibility not your host.  Because even if your host go down and offline, if you have your backups, you should have no long term problem.  Losing a website is a serious matter so I suggest you read the following article for some enlightenment…

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Have you ever accidentally deleted a file on your computer? Was it important? Did you suffer? Well, imagine if your whole website got deleted! This could happen in any number of ways:

• You accidentally delete the files on your web server
• Your host’s server crashes
• The hard drive on your web server fails
• A hacker gets into your system and deletes all your files
• Your web server gets a virus
• Someone accidentally overwrites your web files with an older version

These sorts of things happen to thousands of web masters every day! Even experienced webmasters who should know better lose their files on their web server.

What to do?

Can you imagine having to build your website from scratch again? Quite a daunting task. Imagine having to remember everything that was on your old website and recreating it. It is very near impossible. The longer your site is up and the more you have added to it the more difficult it will be. However, with a bit of foresight and planning, losing your website files will be just a blip in a normal day, with minimum disruption.

The most important thing to do is to back up your website. In fact, if you haven’t done it before, you should suspend reading this article and go and back it up now. If you used FTP to upload your site you will be able to use the same program to download your site. If you have a small site you may be able to use your browser’s ‘Save Web Page’ feature to save each individual page. Work out whichever is the best way to get the webfiles onto YOUR computer, and do it!

Ideally you will need 2 backups of your site, one to save at home, and another to store offsite in case something happens to the first backup. Make sure you label your backups clearly and put them in a safe place where you can find them later. I have to emphasize this last point as I once backed up a website but later couldn’t find where I put the backup when I needed it! Disastrous.

If you update your site on a regular basis you will need to backup on a regular basis too. It is essential that you label each backup correctly with the website name as well as the date. The date is necessary so that you don’t copy an older version of a website if something happens to the newer one.

For larger websites which are constantly changing you will need to install a RAID disk on your web server. RAID disks are basically two disks writing the same information so that 2 copies are created on the fly. Very useful. Ask your web host if he uses RAID disks. It is important to note however that you will still need to do regular backups.

One experienced webmaster relied on RAID disks alone for his backup, however the web server had a virus on it so the backup had to roll back by a month. He lost a month’s worth of work he had done on his website, which was quite an amount as he was changing the design and adding a lot of content. If he had only backed up it would have been no problem instead of becoming the huge headache it did for him.

Remember, there are 3 words you need to remember to protect yourself from a mountain of work if your web files are compromised - BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP!

Edward Sodor has been a part of the webmaster community for nearly 10 years and is always happy to give advice to budding webmasters. For great tutorials on creating, maintaing and improving your website and traffic visit his Website Design and SEO pages.

Foreword:

Website crashes are common these days.  With billions of pages and millions of websites, there’s hundreds of thousands of problematic website owners panicking about their websites and how they will recover their lost website files.  You don’t want to be a statistic or you want to be sure you got your websites covered?  When your websites crash, you better be ready.  Here is a very good advice from an experienced webmaster.

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Two Steps to Crash-Readiness

1) Choose your website host very carefully

There are many low cost hosts out there. Don’t choose a website host based on the low price, the fancy website, the claim of unlimited bandwidth or the slick advertising campaign. Choose your host based on the quality of their equipment and service. Three important things to look for are:

DAILY BACKUPS: You want a host who makes daily backups. Find out if those backups are stored on the same server or off-site. Off-site backups are safer because even in the event that the whole datacenter burns down (which is extremely unlikely) there will be a safely stored copy of your entire website on another server in a second datacenter.

Another good reason to look for a host with daily backups is that if you accidentally delete your entire website yourself, they can restore it within minutes. Don’t laugh. You’d be surprised how often this happens!

SERVERS WITH RAID: RAID stands for “redundant array of independent disks.” In a RAID 10 configuration, all files on the server are mirrored. This means there’s a real-time second copy of everything. So if one drive crashes, no data is lost and it takes only minutes to get back online.

ABILITY TO MAKE YOUR OWN BACKUP: Don’t rely blindly on the backups of your hosting company. Backup files occasionally get corrupted or aren’t complete, so you need to have your own as well. Look for a host who gives you the ability to make your own complete backups. If you host on a cPanel server, this is easy to do with a few clicks within your cPanel and if you save the backup file to your computer you can easily restore your website not only with your current host but at most other cPanel hosts. Be sure you download and save the backup file to your computer and don’t save it on your hosting account because if the server crashes and your backup file was stored on the server, your backup copy will be gone too.

2) Be sure to regularly back up your own website

I advise clients to backup their website monthly and anytime they make major changes. You may also want to backup your databases separately. And always save a copy of any files you upload. In a worst case scenario, if you have a database backup from your store or blog, you can recreate it using the database backup.

Keep in mind that if you use webmail, your mail is being stored on the server and if it crashes your mail will disappear with it.

What to do when your website is gone and you don’t have a backup

Stay calm. You’ll need to deal with it one step at a time.

First, find out if your host has a backup copy. They should. If they don’t, they were not adequately prepared and you need to seriously consider a new website hosting company immediately. If they did have backups stored off site that failed restores, it might be worth giving them a second chance. But otherwise, look for a more prepared company.

If they don’t have a backup copy, and you don’t have a backup copy, then you’ll need to begin reconstructing your website from scratch.

If you’re facing a complete server crash and everything is gone your first steps should be to get your email addresses set back up and put up a temporary page to assure your clients that you will be back online soon. Deal with this before you do anything else. You want to be sure that your email is up and running and that clients are notified that you aren’t out of business.

Next you need to start reconstructing your website. Here are methods for reconstructing your site from various site-building methods.

Created by You

Did you create your own site? If you coded it on your computer, the files should be there somewhere that you can upload back to your web space.

If you publish your site with a program like Dreamweaver or Front Page you may have a copy of your website on your computer that you can upload again from within the program and be all set.

Created by a Website Design Firm

If you had a website designer create your pages for you the chances are very good that your designer has saved a copy of the original files. There may be a fee for their time to get the files reinstalled, but it can save you from having to start from scratch.

HTML Website Recovery

If your site was plain HTML pages (no database) then you may be able to reconstruct it using Google’s handy cache feature. Just put the full URL of the page you need into Google and you’ll see a result come up like this:

The Small Business Muse

Are you a small business owner who wants tips and ideas on how to balance, manage and market your business with an inspirational twist? …

www.thesmallbusinessmuse.com/ - 6k - Cached - Similar pages

See the little link that says “Cached”? Click it. You’ll see the most recent version of your page that Google has saved. Do a “View Source” of the page’s code, and you’ve got your page back! Images will likely be missing but you should be able to find them saved somewhere, and the image names will be in the code so you can search for them on your computer.

Go through one page at a time and if your pages were plain HTML and if Google visited and indexed your site recently, you’ll be able to recover a good portion of your website this way.

Database Driven Site Recovery

If your site was database driven like an ecommerce shop or blog, it’s tougher to reconstruct.

The first thing to do is reinstall whatever your website was powered by (Wordpress, osCommerce, Zen Cart, etc).

Next you need to get your template back. Again the original designer may be helpful so contact them and see if they have a copy of it saved. You may be able to find it in Google’s cache as described above, but it will be a little trickier to get your template code so if you aren’t very familiar with php, HTML, and the way your website worked, ask your virtual assistant or website designer/programmer to help you with this step.

Then you’ll be ready to add your products back in. If you regularly submit to a shopping site like Google Base, see if you have a recent txt file export stored that you could use as a basis to reimport your products. If not, you’ll need to just restock one item at a time.

And next time…

Sometimes lightening does strike the same place twice. So be sure that you are prepared! Not only will you save yourself frustration and work by having a back up copy of your website you can use to easily restore it, you’ll also be able to sleep peacefully at night knowing that you are prepared for the worst case scenario.

Please go backup your website now. Really. Right now. *smiles* You’ll be glad you did, even if you never need to use that backup.

Find Michelle Shaeffer online at The Small Business Muse where she shares weekly tips and strategies for small businesses in The Muses Brainstorm. Stop by The Muses Guide for inspirational guides to help your small business grow.

Foreword:

People sometimes wonder why the hell do they need to backup their e-commerce website files when in fact their hosts are supposed to do this for them.  Interestingly, this reasoning has made serious impact to some major websites I know who relied heavily on their hosts to backup their websites.  If you are not doing this right now, I suggest you do it soon.  Backing up your website is very important as explained by the article author below:

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Do you have a backup of your website files? If your website goes down and the hosting company cannot bring it back up, will you be in deep trouble? While most hosting companies back up their servers regularly, it’s still a good idea to back up your files. If you own an e-commerce site, you especially should back up often, since your hosting company’s backup may be several days old, and you risk losing all of your more recent transactions.

I’d recommend taking it upon yourself to do the backups rather than putting all of your faith in someone else. With a proper backup, in the event of natural disaster, server trouble, disgruntled employee, or any other problem, you can have your site back up in minutes instead of waiting precious days or weeks, or worse - losing data without ever recovering it.

In order to backup your website files, you will need an FTP program (FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol). You can find a good FTP program online, usually with a free trial period, and not expensive to purchase.

As with regular computer backups, you should keep a copy off-site as well. If your site doesn’t change often, then I’d back it up monthly, and then again every time you update any of your pages. If it is updated regularly, then daily or weekly updates are in order. It’s also a good idea to keep multiple backups done on different dates - this way if something goes wrong with a back-up, you can revert to the next most recent backup and likely find the files you need there. Remember to check and test your backups and make sure everything is actually there!

E-commerce sites or other sites that use a database: E-commerce sites that receive orders daily should be backed up daily. Also, if you have an e-commerce or other site that uses a database, you need to back up the database as well. Ask your hosting company for the url to access the database, as well as the username and passcode. You will need to export the database. Here too, I recommend having several versions saved by date, not just one backup.

If the most recent one fails for some reason, you can revert to the next most recent. I’ve seen firsthand how people have lost their entire website, and thousands of dollars in business, due to some natural disaster or server/computer failure. Perform a backup regularly and save yourself the grief, and your site will be back up in minutes.

Amir Watynski owns Watt Media, Inc., which helps businesses promote their services and enhance their image with Telephone On-Hold Messages & Website Design services. Enhance Your Image Blog: http://blog.watt-media.com

Foreword:

Selecting a website backup software or provider?  It’s very hard to do this if you don’t know what you are getting or about to get.  You need to be very careful in choosing a website backup software or provider.  Here is a very good article about website backup software selection so you will be guided.

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A lot of businesses today depend on their web representation. No matter what kind of occupation you are in, in the world of quick information, your website is the foundation upon which your business is based and developed. Even a short server downtime can cost you thousands of dollars not to mention longer periods of downtime which can leave you totally out of operation. And how about complete data loss as a result of hardware failure or natural disasters like flood or fire? If something like this happens, you will have to start everything from scratch. Altogether not a very good prospect, huh?

All this stipulates the necessity for doing website backup. But is website backup a guarantee of safety? Yes, provided you do it correctly and regularly. First of all, you should pay specific attention to the choice of your backup software. Currently, there are many solutions on the market which may suit your purpose, but it makes sense to pick the most simple and reliable one.

A complicated interface is something to be avoided. Everything should be intuitively clear.
It is good if the software has the option of scheduled backup, so you don’t have to manually launch tasks. Among other useful options are file selection, data compression and encryption tools (preferably the 128-bit blowfish cipher).

Secondly, it may not be enough to just read the product specification on the developer’s website. Don’t purchase any software right away. Even if it is good value for its money, it may not suit your particular needs. Instead, make use of the free trial period (if there is no free trial, look for something else).

Also, make sure that the product is provided with a support service and try to find out beforehand how reliable this service is. For example, you may start with writing them a letter and telling them how you got interested in their product, and need to know if it can do this and that. Then see how long it will take them to get back to you and what they will write in reply. If it’s a standard letter with just a product specification in it, the service is not very reliable. However, if the answer is more personal and tries to address your specific problem, it is probably trustworthy.

Additionally, find out if free updates are available to a specific version of the software that you are going to buy. Or how much it will cost you to upgrade to the newer version or another version. Plug-ins are also something to be looked into. Learn what plug-ins there are and what they are responsible for. Some software programs may not be fully functional without their plug-ins.

In short, any simple, yet reliable backup software with the option of full and incremental backup on a schedule with data encryption and compression will suffice to protect your website.

Alexander Golishev is a a copywriter for Novosoft LLC, software developer, with a great deal of expertise in data backup and recovery matters.