{"id":652,"date":"2016-07-01T15:58:00","date_gmt":"2016-07-01T19:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/debradalgleish.com\/blog\/?p=652"},"modified":"2024-03-17T13:13:27","modified_gmt":"2024-03-17T17:13:27","slug":"website-backups","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/debradalgleish.com\/blog\/2016\/07\/01\/website-backups\/","title":{"rendered":"Monthly Website Backups-Stay Safe"},"content":{"rendered":"

Do you do regular website backups? Today I\u2019m making some structural changes to one of my blogs, which is hosted on Hostgator. The instruction page on Hostgator warns (ominously) that you should make a full site backup before beginning. That sounded like good advice, so I decided to follow it!
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\nFirst, in their support section, I found the site backup instruction page<\/a>. Next, I followed the steps carefully, to begin the backup.<\/p>\n

Hostgator promised to send me an email as soon as the backup is ready, and it \u201ccould take a few minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Waiting for the Backup<\/h3>\n

While waiting for the email, I clicked the \u201cGo Back\u201d button.<\/p>\n

That took me to a page where it showed a historical list of all of the site backup files I’ve created.<\/p>\n

In the screen shot below, you can see that full list. It shows all the backups since I started the blog in 2008.<\/p>\n

\"full<\/a>
full website backup list<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What Does Regular Mean?<\/h3>\n

Apparently I like to make a full backup of this once every 8 years, whether I need a backup or not.<\/p>\n

Is that what people mean when they say you should do “regular” backups? Probably not!<\/p>\n

In future, I promise to full website backups more frequently! And that shouldn\u2019t be too difficult, since the bar is set so low!<\/p>\n

Downloading the Backup File<\/h3>\n

It only took about 5 minutes for the Hostgator email to arrive, to let me know that the backup file was ready.<\/p>\n

There was a link in the email, so I clicked that link, to download the file.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the link didn\u2019t show the file size, which would be helpful. However, Firefox was more helpful, and told me that the download file size was 2.2 GB.<\/p>\n

Apparently it will take about 25 minutes.<\/p>\n