This is forward disaster planning to protect sites in case my host goes bust. I don't have any reason to think my host will go bust, but if I find everything has suddenly disappeared and I can't contact anyone I want to be able to get my sites running as quickly and easily as possible on another host.

Instead of backing up just to disk on my computer, am I better off also backing up my sites to another [very cheap] host on dormant domain names, unrelated to my operating domain names, that just sit there doing nothing until I activate them under my operating domain names. The dormant sites won't be submitted to search engines and even if spiders note them they will be so far down any search list that nobody will ever find them.

I own my own domain names and have bought them from sources independent of my host.

I've never restored a site so I have no idea what's involved. Will a full site backup restore everything, such as email, as well as html so that I don't have to set anything up? If not, I mightn't be any worse off just doing fresh uploads from the original site files and then setting everything up afresh, although that's exactly what I'm trying to avoid as it'll take a lot of time.

My host uses Cpanel. Will I be able to backup and / or restore to any host regardless of the control panel system they use or am I stuck with Cpanel?

Any comments or suggestions welcomed.

Thanks.

Backing up your site to your local PC would be fine, but may not be reliabe. Your probably better off making automatic backups every night and automaticly FTP'ing them to another server somewhere. There are hosts out there that give you space specificly for backups, all you get is disk space an nothing more.

Restoring a cPanel backup is extremely easy, upload your file and tell cPanel where it is. It will restore everything, email, mySql, files... everything.

But, your stuck with cPanel. Only cPanel can restore a cPanel backup file. Although you could manually restore it if you really had to.


Another option is to setup a 'development' site. Get a seconed hosting account and duplicate your site on it. You can then use this site for all your development and testing, and copy the files over to your 'real' site when done. This way, you'd always have two copies of your site available at all times, plus any backups between the two of them. That way, if anything happens to either of the sites, you'd have quite a few options as to how to handle things.

If you have a reliable host it shouldn't happen, most hosts have an antivirus, a firewall, and daily back-ups but if you got a mediocre webhost i can see why you can be concerned, but do what Anacrusis says anyways to be on the safe side but like i said, it should not happen unless there is a major security problem with the server and if they have daily back-ups. Hope this helps your problem.

It doesn't matter how reliable your host is. An up to date backup of your site is crucial, especcialy if it's generating an income that you rely on. Your host should be backing your site up everyday, and so should you. There's no such things as too many backups, because you never know what's going to happen.

Originally Posted by Anacrusis

It doesn't matter how reliable your host is. An up to date backup of your site is crucial, especcialy if it's generating an income that you rely on. Your host should be backing your site up everyday, and so should you. There's no such things as too many backups, because you never know what's going to happen.

Exactly my concern.

There's no such thing as a business that can't go bust, no matter how big it is or how much it's supposedly worth, e.g. Enron.

With hosts in particular the problem is that they're usually selected online with no real idea of what stands behind them and no way of contacting them except email. They're quite likely in another state or country - my main one is based in Germany with servers in the US and I'm in Australia - so it's not possible to visit their offices, assuming anyone is still there.

If they go bust the first, and last, we might know about it is dead screens and unanswered emails. If they hold our data and control our domain names, we go down with them unless we've got backups that we can restore independently of them.

Doggy,

If your budget allows you to purchase additional hosting packages from another company then go for it. If you are buying "Cheap Hosting" Though backing up the data on your home PC may be just as reliable. Additionally if you do go with another hosting company you wouldn't need another domain name just ask your potential host if they accept IP hosting.

I'd definitely get some sort of FTP backup in place off site. Not only do you have the problem of your host going bust. What if the datacentre burns down?

Anacrusis is right that an up to date backup of your site is crucial.

We backup www.bonsaihelp.co.uk hourly off site via FTP with a nifty PHP script and cron job! If you want it, just shout!

Andrew
www.hostyorkshire.com