Two is always better than one.
We've made a few news articles about the importance of backing up your websites, so we thought it only fitting that Back Ups get their own section at Rhye Smile. Do you have a secure, complete back up of your own site, or of any sites you host?
Sometimes things go wrong. This is an inevitability of life, and unfortunately when things go wrong with web servers they tend to go drastically wrong. To ensure that your website isn't effected by any potential server outages or cyber attacks, you need to have a current back up of your site ready to take over. If you're the one hosting the site, ensuring that your clients have back ups is even more important, because if something goes wrong you'll be the one they blame - even if it's not your fault.
This is why Rhye Media does a complete server back up daily. This back up includes every website that we host and is held for fourteen days before being overwritten by the next one. We do this just on the off chance that there could ever be a complete system failure, which would require us to move the entire content onto a new server.
Should this event ever occur, at the data centre where our server is located there is actually another one that is an exact copy. The two are constantly syncing and contain exactly the same information, so if one fails the redundant system is designed to immediately kick in and prevent any losses or downtime. As a web host, this professional system can provide extra peace of mind for you and your clients.
In addition to full server back ups, we also complete individual back ups of each site every second day. These are also held for fourteen days before being overwritten. These back ups are the ones we go to if there's an issue with an individual site - for example, if one has been hacked. We can upload the saved copy and the site will return to the same status it was at when the back up was done.
Our servers are protected - but there is always the possibility of being hacked, a few websites we've designed that were hosted on other servers have been compromised, and it's never a good thing! If you design a site for clients which is hosted externally and you're worried about the security of their server, there are a few things you can do to make sure that they're still backed up.
You can do a manual back up, where you compress, download, archive and store the site, including files and databases. If the site is hosted on another server, however, you cannot back up any other components of their hosting package (such as mail accounts, any of their preferences, etc.). Everything else will remain locked on their server.
cPanel has a built in back up system where you can download a .zip copy of an entire site (or individual components). This file will be saved to your server, and from there you can download it to your personal computer for safekeeping. This is a relatively easy and effective manual way of ensuring that a site is backed up. Full back ups cannot be restored directly via cPanel, but partial back ups (eg. either website, database or e-mail) can.
It's important to remember that if you do have a back up of a site saved it is not on the same server as the live site. If that server is physically damaged through fire or theft, for example, you'll lose both the original and the back up. This is just as vital in the case of cyber attacks, because if someone manages to hack a server, once they're in they can access any sites stored there regardless of individual levels of protection. To prevent this from occurring, every server should have a firewall installed that blocks the IP address of any suspicious activity. In Rhye Media's case, entering your password incorrectly more than three times is included in the 'suspicious activity' category, so be careful when logging in!