How important is backing up your website? In my opinion, it’s essential. If you depend on people finding your website in order to contact you, place an order, or get directions, you need your website live.
I recommend WordPress for many of the websites we develop at SCWD because of its powerful and simple admin panel. One of the great things about WordPress is that you have the ability to add content without needing to know HTML coding. You can add pages, change verbiage, add events or blog posts, change your phone number – all without having to call your web designer and pay an hourly rate. This lets you have control of your content and not be dependent on anyone else’s schedule to make your changes for you.
Since WordPress is open source software, anyone can look “under the hood” in order to see how it’s built. Being open source is one of the many reasons why WordPress has become so popular. There’s no charge to buy WordPress and you can make alterations to the code or get plug-ins that will make your changes for you. I still find it absolutely amazing that I can have a client ask if his website can do something and I can say yes to just about anything. So many people have put countless hours into extending WordPress and letting other people use the end product – usually with no monetary benefit to them.
But with all this awesome collaboration, there is the flipside: jerks who like to exploit vulnerabilities in code. They wiggle their way in to plant seeds of destruction on your website. Now I’m telling you this right now – eventually they will get you. Nobody is immune. You can, however, take steps to protect yourself as much as possible by at least having backups of your website.
Sorry to leave you hanging, but I’ve got to get back to work! Next month, we will go into detail about what needs to be backed up on a WordPress site and how you can do it yourself.