Blog | The Value of Data Backup
Not everyone realizes the value and necessity of backing up their data frequently. With the somewhat dependability of modern technology, we take our informations security and safety for granted. More often than not, your data is not in your hands as shared hosting, remote databases, and other cloud computing technologies are the popular and all too common method for storing data. Frequent scheduled backups using some very valuable free applications can save you hours of work and hardship that losing your data could cause.
Remote Server Woes
Few people realize that their hosts aren’t as reliable as they think they are. Sure, you may have never had a problem with your current host before and you recommend all of your clients to them, but that’s not to say that they don’t suffer from the fallacies of all technology. Sometimes things just go wrong.
For example, a few weeks back I was working with a client and I recommended dreamhost to them. Very low cost, met their needs, it was right down their alley. With my creative juices flowing in overdrive, I finished their entire website design and had it live on their brand new host. They spent a solid 24 hours populating it with the necessary content and we were on the right track for an accelerated launch. Lo and behold, I go to check their site one day and it’s not there. Zip, zilch, nada, nothing. It turns out that the server that dreamhost put them on (they were using shared hosting at the time) had fatally crashed losing the data for everyone on that particular server. I assured the client that this was not an issue as most hosts backup their data daily, or at least weekly.
This was not the case
It seems that Dreamhost did not have a backup of any of our data for whatever reason. Now this could have been due to the fact that we had only put our files on the server in the past few days, but this instantly the useless security blanket I had shielded myself with. This was not good. I followed up with support to make sure they didn’t have any backup images of our content, once I was sure they did not I went to plan B, putting her site back up and getting the information repopulated. Backing up data for quick launches like this are usually not an issue as you don’t think anything can go wrong during a 3-4 day project. It is important to understand that anything can happen it is better to be safe than sorry.
Luckily, we lost the physical content on the server but our MySQL servers were still functional an in tact. This separation of data was a life saver in our case as some of our key information was stored without the databases. Many people neglect the fact that your website, whether it is an eCommerce site or a Blog, depends heavily on it’s database for it’s content and the physical files for it’s design. Both should be considered when backing up your data!
Local Data Quandries
Another problem arose a few weeks ago when I got a call from an associate saying that they lost their “art” folder where they stored all of their original art files. After calming them down and letting them know things would be ok, I walked them through a few standard things to make sure they weren’t already buried in the grave they seem to have dug up. First things first, I set them up with an external hard drive and told them to manually backup their data monthly. Big mistake. The problem with manually backing up the data is that it requires remembering to do it every month. With the busy life of a designer, some things get tossed to the way side when rivaled with remembering if a client paid you or not. Well, their data was last backed up 4 months ago according to them and they had already gone to recover it from the external hard drive.
I really will not go into details as this is almost unbelieavable, but they deleted their outdated backup as well. They had been in the process of updating their external backup by deleting their most recent image and when they deleted their local directory of files and when they realized that was a mistake, they went and deleted the backup files as that was the correct file they were trying to replace. But wait… they just permanently deleted both sources of their files. Their current and backup. That’s when I got the call. You may think to yourself that this was foolish and you would or could never make this mistake, but mistakes do happen. It is best to protect yourself from the possibility rather than delude yourself with the security of the unlikeliness.
Backup Tips
Physical Files
A good habit for ensuring that you never lose you or your client’s valuable files is to login to the respective FTP accounts and download all of the files to a local directory. Set a routine out of this by setting a weekly day where you spend an hour going to all of your sites and the sites you still manage to backup all of their files. Once you store them locally, you should also set them up with a backup on an external hard drive. This means that you now have the files saved on the server, on the server backups that your host provides, and a weekly image in two different local locations as your hard drive could fail on you as well. This security Precaution could save you hours of work and save you from any cruel emails or voice mails from your clients blaming you for the problem.
Database Backups
Databases are just as valuable as your physical files as the generally store the actual content of a website. There are numerous wordpress plugins that you can setup to automatically backup your databases. You should make it a standard routine of backing up your databases both on the server in a directory created solely for this purpose and locally with your site physical files. phpMyAdmin also allows you to backup your databases and save them as a physical file on your computer. Adding database backups to your weekly routines should be a standard as most sites depend on both to function properly.
Saving Methods and Procedures
I found that it is personally best to save three versions of all of my backups. I save a daily, weekly, and monthly backup of my files, both my personal and art related, and my website backups. using SyncBack, I setup automatic nightly backups for all my local directories, including the folder designated “website backups.” This is overwritten nightly so if you are looking for changes for days prior, you would have to go to your weekly or monthly backups. This method allows you access file versions from a month ago at most, so if you are looking for a really old version of something it is best to just save a different copy of it if you feel you would ever need that specific version in the future. With hard drives being ridiculously cheap now a days, don’t horde your available space only to pay for it later.
Backup your files with Syncback
Download Now
After trying quite a few of automatic backup utilities, Syncback seems to do everything I need and it does it well. It is fairly hard to find the Free Version download link on the official site so I took the liberty of direct linking it above. Syncback is a very straight forward, easy to use, automated file backup utility. There are a wealth of features such as synchronizing different directories, FTP and Email backups, and even Version Snapshots which allow you to keep an image of previous versions of your backup. That is all fine and dandy but I just use it for good ol’ fashion external hard drive backups. The backup to FTP feature is top notch but for those of you on restricted monthly Bandwidth plans through your Broadband Provider, I don’t recommend it.
As I previously mentioned, I like to backup my data 3 times. Daily, Weekly, and Monthly. This is a safety precaution to ensure I don’t overwrite old versions that I may want to go back to. If it’s over a month old and you are just now realizing that you messed up, consider the problems that follow a lesson learned. First thing you want to do after installing SynBack is setup your directories you would like to backup your files. I recommend creating a folder on an external hard drive named “Backups.” From there, create 3 folders for each directory you want to back up, Resources Daily, Resources Weekly, and Resources Monthly. If you are backing up a directory that rarely changes you can settle with Weekly and Monthly, but always have at least to backup versions saved at any given time. Once you create your backup directories on your backup media of choice, it’s time to start create your automated backup Profiles!
Press the New button in the bottom left hand corner of the application to create a new Profile. A window should pop up giving you the choices of creating a new Backup, Synchronization, or Group Profile. For the sake of this guide, choose Backup and press OK. Enter the name of the new profile, FolderName Daily or Weekly, or whichever profile you are creating first.
Click the folder Icon to the right of Source and Destination and select the folders accordingly. You want the Source directory to be what you are copying to your backup media and the Destination to be the new Backup folder you created Corresponding to the Profile you are working on now (If you are creating the FolderName Daily profile, obviously choose the FolderName Daily folder you created.) Once you choose the Source and Destination, press the “Expert” Button on the bottom of the application to the left of the OK Button. This should reveal a lot more tabs for you to navigate.
Navigate to the Misc. Tab on the far right and click the big “Schedule” button now shown. Press yes to create a new Schedule and Click ok to confirm you understand how to set a password (No need to set one.) When the final popup finally shows, navigate to the Schedule tab and there you will see the area where you can choose the Frequency and Start Time of your Profile schedule. You can set it your files to backup every few days, Daily, Weekly, Monthly, At Logon or Startup, and you can even set specific days of the week or dates if you click the advanced settings.
Set up a Schedule frequency and time that best works for you, I have mine run at 2:00 AM for each task and I have all of my monthly routines set to run on different days each month to make sure there are no slow downs (I never have any problems with it slowing down my computer but I can’t vouch for others.) Once you hit ok, you are good to go! Rinse and repeat for the Weekly and Monthly Profiles of your directory and then move on to a new directory. It is completely worth spending 20 minutes setting this up as it pays off in the long run. Twenty minutes of your busy day is a good investment to prevent the potential loss of hours of work.
Work Locally and Update using an FTP
The best way to ensure you don’t lose any of your code if a server ever goes down is to make sure you code locally! Some people like to code in the WYSIWYG areas within Wordpress and other popular CMS back-ends, this can lead to a lot of problems as you depend on accessing the server to work with your files. I found that using Notepad++, a light weight notepad replacement with Code Syntax coloring and a built in FTP is the best place to write your markup or programming. by working locally, you can quickly save your progress and not depend on the internet or host for working on your site. All you have to do is put your FTP info in the built FTP module and you can instantly upload your saved file whenever you are ready. With it’s tabbed interface, I can easily navigate and manage different pages of the site and the CSS Stylesheet without having to load a new page to edit it on the website. Also, Code Syntax highlighting is invaluable to any designer that works with intricate or extensive markup/programming.
If you are working with a CMS, simply save all of your page and css files to a local directory, preferably in your site folder in your web folder. This one thing to realize when working on your files locally is if you do any changes to these files on the website, you will have to download the new versions before working with your local files again as you can potentially overwrite any changes you’ve done. It is best to stick with either local or remote editing to prevent these problems.
