Your server hard drive crashed. A hacker compromised your account and delete all files. Your web host disappeared with their money and their data. These catastrophic events occur without warning, and without discretion. If you are not prepared for the worst, your hard work can be lost forever. That’s why it is very important that you keep backups of your data. Do not worry, there are a variety of backup options to pick and choose.

The backup schedule

Depending on the type of site you run, you will have to choose a backup option that suits your needs. If you run a forum, news site, or any site with updated information you will want a daily backup at least.

However, if you operate a simple personal page, which has not changed in over a year, keeping a backup copy of the most recent changes are sufficient. A good rule of thumb for casual webmaster is to make a full backup every week or so.

The manual backups

The easiest way to backup your data is to download all files in your account. This can be done with a simple FTP program, copy the folder on the local hard disk.

A good backup practice is to create a “web backup” folder on your computer, with a sub-folder that indicates the date and time of creation of the backup. Thus, if the host delete your account, or otherwise lose some or all of your files, you can choose a new host and upload your website in its entirity. The disadvantage of this option is the backup intensive monthly bandwidth, since all data must be downloaded each time you do a backup.

Note: The download of the folder does not download the database on the server, you should ask your provider for details on backing up databases
Automatic backups

The hosts of the site may or may not offer a solution to automatic backup. For those who do not usually follow one of the backup plans following, with higher costs associated with more frequent backups:

daily
every other day
weekly
monthly backups

As we said before, depending on what kind of website you run, choose the best backup program for your needs.
Incremental vs. full backups

Two classifcations incremental backups and complete:.

The incremental backups backup controller compares the existing backup data to be copied. If it’s an exact match between the two, then there is no additional images will be supported. However, if you added or edited any files, these files are updated in the backup, hence the name incremental.
Full Backup – All files are written to the backup, but already in the most recent backup.