Why You Should NOT Depend On Your Hosting Service For Backup

I’ve just gotten thru helping yet another friend who has lost the content of their entire website due to a hosting blurb.  I don’t know why it always surprises me when I find out that small business owners just trust that someone else has their website’s best interests at heart. 

So have you ever been caught in this situation:  You paid for a website.  Someone setup your hosting for you and you don’t even know where it is…it’s just there.  For some reason, after a period of time, your website goes down.  Who’s fault is it?  How do you fix it?

What Happened?

If you didn’t pay anyone for the hosting service, a number of things could have happened:

1. The person who was hosting your site deleted your files
2. The person who was hosting your site lost power or internet
3. The person who was hosting your site didn’t pay for their hosting service

You can see where this was a bad idea to begin with.  You are completely dependent on someone else to keep your site online.  Solution:  PAY FOR YOUR OWN WEBSITE HOSTING.  It’s not that expensive, so stop being so cheap.

If you did pay for the hosting service, a completely different set of problems could have occurred:

1. The host has an outage and will be back up soon
2. The host was hacked or attacked by malware
3. They went out of business
4. You forgot to renew your domain name
5. You forgot to renew your hosting service

While the above can happen to the well-meaning small business owner, there needs to be some backup plan in place, so if it should happen (God forbid!!), you don’t panic and your customers don’t assume you have gone out of business.

Backup Plans That Don’t Rely Solely On Your Web Host

1. First off, get copies of your website files.  This includes html files, images, databases, stylesheets, flash files, and javascripts.  If your website gets lost, you can simply purchase a hosting account somewhere else and upload your files.
2. Secondly, know where your website is hosted.  I have tried to help numerous clients who simply have NO IDEA where their website is hosted.  If you don’t know, then who are you going to call when it goes down?  NO ONE.  You see the dilemma.  To find out who is hosting your website (if you are one of the one’s that don’t know) go to dnsstuff.com and type in your website address into the whois lookup bar.
3. Find some way to remind yourself when your domain and hosting renewals are coming due.  A good host should send you reminders and easy ways to pay within a few minutes.  If not, you may want to consider switching.  If your domain renewal lapses, someone else may grab it and you won’t get it back!
4. BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP!!!  I can’t say this enough, especially if your website runs on a database.  If you have an online store, blog, cms, or forum, you have a database.  Find out how to back it up and do so weekly.

In conclusion, don’t turn a blind eye to your hosting.  If you get caught in a pinch, there are few people out there who are going to come to your rescue.  Follow the steps above to ensure a backup plan.  That way, if and when you are stuck, you don’t have to panic!