Website Backup and Maintenance
Adirondack Website Design
Hosting companies are not responsible for your website.
You are.
Most people believe that website hosting companies are responsible for the security and backup of their website.
They aren’t.
However, this is most often not true and hosting companies are generally not responsible for website security, backups or restoration of websites should such be necessary.
There are many reasons for this but data storage space, the technical staff which would have to be assigned to provide server and customer support would require these hosting companies to spend big money in providing these services. It’s much easier for them to shift the burdens of backup and maintenance to their clients than to provide it themselves.
Did you know that websites require updates and maintenance? That’s right, there are new updates to the types of computer code your website may use on a nearly daily basis. These updates address security issues, new ways to prevent website hacks, add features to code bases and improve performance.
Adirondack Website Design can provide your business with regular website maintenance and backups and, if necessary, file and database restoration services to keep your on-line presence safe and operational. We have a variety of packages to suit your business needs and your budget. Just call or e-Mail us and let us know what you’re looking for.
What you are about to read may surprise you. The published on-line customer backup policies for 5 major website hosting companies including GoDaddy, Network Solutions, DreamHost, HostGator and Bluehost are referenced here but the fact is that the overwhelming majority of website hosting companies do not routinely and automatically backup their customers’ websites or databases. It the explicit policy of these and most other website hosting companies to place the burden of website file and database backup on their customer – you.
Why Websites Require Maintenance
A modern website is a complex and intricate weave of computer programming, scripts, graphics, content (words and images) as well as in many cases product information (pricing, product descriptions, etc.) and data structures that work together to present a website across multiple desktop, laptop, tablet and cell phone platforms. This chain of technologies that enable a modern website to work correctly is quite long and a break in any one of these links can bring a website down if the code which comprises the website is not properly updated and maintained.
Often, it’s human error that can corrupt files within a website. It’s quite common for a website owner to accidentally change or delete a file critical to the coding of the website when trying to update their website, change out content or modify their website’s system settings..
Once your website developer, including Adirondack Website Design, places all of your website files and data within the hosting company servers and you verify that everything is working and the development contract is complete, the website developer is no longer responsible for the health of the website as their job is done. Absent an additional agreement covering website maintenance, including regular code updates and backups of the website files and database(s), the full responsibility to keep your website up to date and properly backed up is yours.
This is why website backup and maintenance services from Adirondack Website Design is so important. We can provide website code updates, content additions and regular backups to give you the security and peace of mind that your website will be ready for your potential customers.
“4.3 Storage and Security. You shall be solely responsible for undertaking measures to: (1) prevent any loss or damage to your website or server content; (2) maintain independent archival and backup copies of your website or server content; and (3) ensure the security, confidentiality and integrity of all your website or server content transmitted through or stored on our servers.”
“4.4 Website/Server Content. You shall be solely responsible for providing, updating, uploading and maintaining your website or server and any and all files, pages, data, works, information and/or materials on, within, displayed, linked or transmitted to, from or through your website or server including, but not limited to, trade or service marks, images, photographs, illustrations, graphics, audio clips, video clips, email or other messages, meta tags, domain names, software and text. You acknowledge and agree that in the course of providing you with technical assistance, it may be necessary for our support staff to modify, alter or remove the content of your hosted product. Your website or server content shall also include any registered domain names provided by you or registered on behalf of you in connection with the Hosting Services.”
If you need website security, maintenance and/or website backups please call or e-Mail us to let us know. We will contact you within 24 hours to discuss your needs. If you are already a Adirondack Website Design client then please just e-Mail or call us to setup your website maintenance and backup plan.
Network Solutions, a well known and well regarded Web.com company with over 30 years of experience and over 3 million customers does not automatically backup your databases and their file backup feature can only access 7 days worth of backups! If your website is quite old, does not offer e-commerce and is not mobile device capable then this might work for you. However, today’s modern websites work with at least one database at the back-end and unless you are highly familiar with MySql, database and table structures and relationships, interactive php programing – and have the time to do so – then this is no solution either.
Once again, if you need website maintenance and/or website backups please call or e-Mail us. We will contact you within 24 hours to discuss your needs. If you are already a Adirondack Website Design client then please just e-Mail or call us to setup your website maintenance and backup plan.
Since 1997 DreamHost hosts over 1.5 million websites, WordPress blogs, and applications – but it too does not automatically backup the files and databases of its website hosting customers. Worse yet, if you do go through the time and effort to create a full backup of all of your website’s files and databases DreamHost does not guarantee your backups will be available. “DreamHost does not guarantee the backups for your domains. It is highly recommended that you always keep local backups of your site contents just in case a DreamHost backup is not available. Read DreamHost’s policy for more information.
Adirondack Website Design can provide you with peace of mind if you need website maintenance and/or website backups please call or e-Mail us. We will contact you within 24 hours to discuss your needs. If you are already a Adirondack Website Design client then please just e-Mail or call us to setup your website maintenance and backup plan.
HostGator does not automatically provide backups of its website hosting customers website files and databases. In fact, HostGator openly states this a number of places within their website. They provide that “HostGator backups are provided as a courtesy and are not guaranteed. Customers are responsible for their own backups and web content and should make their own backups for extra protection. For additional information, please refer to our Terms of Service“.
28. Backups and Data Loss
Your use of the Services is at your sole risk. HostGator’s backup service runs once a week and overwrites any of our previous backups. Only one week of backups are kept at a time. This service is provided only to shared and reseller accounts as a courtesy and may be modified or terminated at any time at HostGator’s sole discretion. HostGator does not maintain backups of dedicated accounts. HostGator is not responsible for files and/or data residing on your account. You agree to take full responsibility for all files and data transferred and to maintain all appropriate backup of files and data stored on HostGator’s servers.
Any shared account using more than 20 gigs of disk space will be removed from our off site weekly backup with the exception of databases continuing to be backed up. All data will continue to be mirrored to a secondary drive to help protect against data loss in the event of a drive failure.
Are you reading this? “HostGator is not responsible for files and/or data residing on your account. You agree to take full responsibility for all files and data transferred and to maintain all appropriate backup of files and data stored on HostGator’s servers“. So what can you do?
If you need website maintenance and/or website backups please reach out by e-Mail or phone. We will contact you within 24 hours to discuss your needs. If you are already a Adirondack Website Design client then please just e-Mail or call us to setup your website maintenance and backup plan.
The final website hosting company on our list Bluehost is a web hosting company owned by Endurance International Group. It is one of the 20 largest web hosts, collectively hosting well over 1.9+ million domains with its sister companies, HostMonster, FastDomain and iPage. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluehost
If you have read this far then you know what comes next – Bluehost does not provide automatic backups of website files or databases for its website hosting customers.
“Bluehost does not offer redundant or mirrored backups. Bluehost will run courtesy backups at our discretion. Any backups that Bluehost runs are in addition to our Terms of Service and are not guaranteed. Customers are encouraged to run periodic backups through the provided cPanel. Bluehost recommends that you store such backups off site on your local system”. https://my.bluehost.com/cgi/help/312
That’s right – any backups that Bluehost runs are not guaranteed and customers are encouraged to run periodic backups and store them off site. Adirondack Website Design can help you manage all of these requirements while you manage your business processes – giving you peace of mind and the flexibility to not only backup and restore your website files and databases, if necessary, but to manage your content for you as well.
If you need website maintenance and/or website backups please call or e-Mail us to let us know. You can fill out the form or just give us a call. We will contact you within 24 hours to discuss your needs. If you are already a Adirondack Website Design client then please just e-Mail or call us to setup your website maintenance and backup plan.