Offsite Backup: Backing Up Your Website The Smart Way

Offsite Backup: Backing Up Your Website The Smart Way



You’ve put up your website online for all to see. While it’s a great way to start, how secure is your website? Symantec estimates that as many as 85% of companies did not disclose their data breaches in 2015, and there were over one million web attacks each day in 2015.

Is your website safe?

Things can easily go wrong. It could be a simple database error or your site may have to deal with a malware attack – either way, you would need to ensure security isn’t compromised.

 

Why Going the OnSite Way Isn’t Necessarily the Right Way

You can store all the important data on-premise. Unfortunately, this can be lost easily – like in cases of fire or other natural disasters. While on-site backup is an easy way to store your website files, there are certain disadvantages.

 

  1. You can easily lose the data stored on hard drives if you do not install proper servers.
  2. Building up on-site servers can add up to your storage costs, that you can possibly do without.
  3. Discrepancies in data storage can prove to be very expensive for the company.

 

How Is Offsite Backup the Answer?

What you need is an offsite backup. It involves storing data remotely. You don’t need to own the servers – just hire someone who does. Many of the data server centres are fireproof as well, to limit any chances of data loss. Data loss, EMC estimates, costs companies as much as $1.7 trillion a year.

 

With double backup, the chance of you losing out on important information is next to none. Here is how you can benefit with an offsite backup plan.

 

  1. Secures data in an offsite location – You get data that is secured remotely, eliminating the possibility of data thefts.
  2. Takes backups regularly – Your backup provider will take offsite backups at regular intervals to ensure you get access to the most updated version.
  3. Get access to data as you need – There would be a backup available all the time, for you to download when you need.
  4. No duplicate data – Checks on duplication of data ensures that data backup and recovery will be easier.

 

How do you backup in cPanel?

offsite backup

Now that you’ve decided to go for offsite backup, let us take a look at how the cPanel backup system works. Your website provider will do the offsite backup for you, and doing this will mitigate the chances of data theft or file corruption for you. The process is fairly simple, and if you can navigate around cPanel, you wouldn’t find this difficult.

 

Most web providers have cPanel – the main backend area of your website. Here is how you can backup your website through it.

 

Step 1– First, you will need to login to your cPanel account of the website.

Step 2 – Navigate to the Files section.

Step 3 – Now, you will see a Backup section. You will need to click on ‘Download a Full website backup’ option. Some web hosts require you to subscribe to their backup services to do    this – so you may have to pay first.

Step 4 – Now, on the next screen, choose that you want to save the file in your Home Directory.

Step 5 -Click on the enable email notification so that you get notified once the backup is complete.

Step 6 – Now, you will need to click on Generate Backup button to initiate the backup process. You will see the backup in progress.

 

After some time, you will find the complete backup in your Home Directory.

 

How to download the backup file?

Once the backup has been completed, you will receive an email notification. The time taken to complete the backup can take a few minutes to as much as an hour or more, depending on the size of your website and other factors.

 

Step 1 – You can head off to your cPanel.

Step 2 – You will see the backup file in the home directory in Files.

Step 3 – Download the backup from the File Manager. You will probably see the file named similar to this backup-15.12.2017_15-51-32_example.tar.gz

 

Your cPanel backup is now complete.

 

While on premise data storage can always help, and is a good idea to implement, do not forget to invest in offsite backups. It’s cost effective and easy to use.