Really? You Don’t Need A Website Disaster And Recovery Program? Why?

If you answered YES to that, you’re dead wrong my friend. Let me try to give you real life examples.

Recently I asked this question to a lady called Dorothy and said webmaster simply

“Well, why should I do? My webhost says that guarantee 99.9% of cases, my website is going to be okay. Besides, I do not know how to do it if that’s technical area. So why me should matter? ”

That is the mentality of many people like her who really believes that 99% uptime guarantees are in the promises of your page webhosts, and are unsure of your website.

First, what is “Disaster Recovery”?

This is a business owner’s plan of action, systems and procedures to ensure business continuity when disasters and disruptions arising in the ordinary course of business.

Each of the major corporations and businesses around the world this year in its program as part of its assessment of risk management. It is also known as the “Program for Business Continuity in the corporate world.

I know that your online business and websites are important to you. So why then should it not apply to your online business as well?

You know that often a disaster when we least expect it. Sometimes it happens even when you have a big launch of a product or an advertising campaign, when suddenly dropped their websites and boom, all your efforts and investments were down the drain too.

If hackers happen to pick your site for fun and fame, managed to break or disfigure their release worms, Trojan horses, DDOS attacks like robots and damage their Web sites as a result, what will you do next?

What about the fire in the datacenter where the server or maybe a hard drive fails on your Web server? There are even cases of errors in the technical configurations, lower server hardware, server hosting of overcrowding, lack of technical support personnel and other problems that your host does not tell you about.

These disasters have devastated many businesses online in the past. And my sites are not safe too. Believe me when I say that has happened to my sites sometimes even in my own dedicated server! Only disaster shows that occur to your hosting, and sometimes can not do anything about it.

Website defacing and hacking, viruses and worms, the server fails, the server hardware failures, data fire, network failure, electrical faults, technical error, long-time service and other recurring disaster site can immediately put you out of business. And that’s just one effect. Not to mention the loss of money, lost opportunities and wasted time.

Why?

Because time is not acceptable these days. Your customers and visitors can not wait all the time to be back online. If you can not find you, which may or may not buying into the trade with you and go to the competition is easy as a click of a mouse. Your advertising and promotional campaigns are a waste of their dead because the web sites. Much money is lost in the recovery and restoration, as well as lost opportunities that will surely miss.

That’s why we all need to do contingency planning and disaster recovery a high priority in our business online, especially if taken seriously, a lot of money from it.

Incidentally, I am not scaring you at all. But think for a moment. Imagine a situation where you and your sites are in total chaos, you do not know what to do because you do not have a backup site, you do not have a restoration plan and do not know that to run or talk about it.

You see, every webmaster should have a plan of action. Its program and disaster recovery should not only target your web pages (html, images, photos, audio, zippers and other files). You should know that there are other components of website you need to care too much.

For example, many websites today are installed MySQL database to store and manage their customers, sales, products, and data files of visitors among other things. MySQL is free to use in a natural way, many people use it to your website scripts. There is a good chance that you are using or have used too much, right?

So when disaster strikes, are not only risk their websites, databases MYSQL beautiful are also at risk. Most often, webmasters have backups of local web pages, scripts and files on your hard drive that can be restored. MYSQL database, but needs a backup procedure to you to remove it from your website directly from the control panel. Unable to easily create and upload it as your html, PDF and zip files. Your Web server creates and grows, these databases in real time. So if you are not technically inclined to know as a webmaster, you can ignore it and face the risk of loss in the future. However, the loss of their business data is like losing the continuity of their business. Once lost, you will find it difficult to retrieve.

Another component is the website of scripts on your site. They need a disaster recovery plan as well. Say for example you purchased a PHP script that has an auto-install the automatic update function of the seller. Most times, you do not have a copy of this script to your hard drive (since the seller could be installed for you for free) version of the more updates that are automatically applied to your website each time the published a new vendor.

If you do not back up all the configuration script from PHP, then you will be very difficult for this script to restore your last statement. Imagine back to version 1 or version of your scripts. You end up paying the seller, or a top programmer a lot of money to restore this for you, even if you are lucky enough to have the script from the seller again for free. If not, you have to pay for it again.

Crazy huh?

What a waste of money just because you do not have a disaster recovery plan y. Not only that. You will lose face, customers or visitors, the momentum, the opportunities and above all, time to recover and restore everything to its last state.

Sure you do not want to go back to square one, right?

So here are five (5) simple steps that you can do to configure your own Disaster Recovery Program and its online business:

1. First, realize that their websites and the rest of the ingredients are always at risk. If you still think your web hosting that nothing can happen to your site no matter what, you will not be able to know until you’ve lost everything. I know this and I speak from experience. If you can sleep well at night knowing that as a webmaster, who is in control, then what really is worth doing alone. If you’re still not convinced, answer this question: “Can I really miss that in some hands the fate of your online business?” Remember, most of the time, you have never met or talk to your web hosting.

2. Second, back up all files on your website, scripts and databases on the local hard disk, a remote server or other outside media. This means you are going to download, store and update these files from time to time. You have to patiently on schedule (better after a week or more each day if you have high traffic websites databases). You will use these backup files to restore the site of its last state when a disaster. Usually, hosting, control panels like Cpanel, Plesk, and Ensim Webmin is a backup and restore the facility of the page where you can do this. Please check the control panel manual for details.

3. Third, learn to recover and restore their websites to their last state. Since your online business is important, you should be able to recover quickly from any disaster. A quick restoration plan must be tested on site and during the “good times”, so when the bad times “come, you are well prepared for this. Remember, if you know how to create your website, you must also know how to rebuild as well. This is necessary not only during disasters, but also whether they are transferring to another web host or web server.

4. Fourth, work together, if you’re not a programmer or technical knowledge about websites, scripts and MYSQL databases, with someone who has that knowledge. When disaster strikes, you should be able to shoot someone before the technology can do for you if you do not know how. My suggestion is that someone or Elance.com Scriptlance.com. Since these sites are working on a project bidding system, you’ll get better service at lower prices. There are also risks involved here but that is another matter. The important thing is that you know where to get help when needed.

5. And finally, follow your plan and do it with diligence. You can never know when problems occur so you have to be ready all the time. And this can only be done seriously to four (4) steps.

Remember, this disaster recovery plan and is its own insurance for your online business. You do not have to pay someone to do it for you. You can do this if you just realize that your online business is always at risk and it is important to follow so that you will benefit from it in the long term.

As the triumphant disaster on any line is met, you know how good it is to be in full control.

And that, my friend, is a great feeling.