Locking Up Your Store

I was speaking with a friend today about my recent website troubles last weekend, and we commiserated about another business owner that we both know who had not fared as well as I did in terms of restoring the business website. This individual was blaming everyone else for the mishap, but the bottom line is that the responsibility falls squarely on the shoulders of the business owner for failing to have backup measures in place.

I learned that the hard way early on in my business when I completely goofed up the home page of a client’s website and was unable to restore it. I had to get a backup from the original designer and recreate the page, all on my dime. The hard knock lesson for me? Never change something that I’m unable to restore to its original condition. So, from that point forward, I’ve always had at least one backup, if not more than one, of all of my websites and those of clients.

If you don’t have a brick-and-mortar location, your website is your storefront. People find you and enter your store (website) and look at what you have to offer and decide whether they want to buy what you’re offering. They’ll either hang out and look around for a bit, or choose to leave, and may or may not return in the future. It’s the primary way they do business with you.

So, if you own a jewelry store, for example, you would never think of leaving it unlocked at night and subject the contents to theft or the interior to vandalism or fire. You would lock it up safe and sound, turn on the alarm system, and go home at night, reasonably assured that when you return the next day, all will be as you left it.

Not having a backup of your website is just like leaving the door to your jewelry store unlocked, personally inviting in some vandals, helping them pour the gasoline, and burning your store to the ground. You’re completely out of the jewelry business, as your location and contents have been totally destroyed. It will take you months, maybe years, to rebuild or relocate and restock the company.

Don’t burn your store to the ground. If you’re not the webmaster of your site, ask your webmaster if s/he is keeping a backup on a hardrive or disk someplace and is regularly making a backup of the site. If you’re the webmaster, your site backups should also be backed up everytime your backup your computer.

I regularly backup the files on my hard drive to my Iomega portable hard drive (www.iomega.com) and online to my Xdrive account, www.xdrive.com. Keeping them here on site locally is convenient if I need them, but as I live in the center of Tornado Alley, I know that I could lose my home in less than 10 minutes if a tornado were to strike. Having all of my files offsite gives me peace of mind to know that I’ll be able to go to my store (website) the next day and probably find things the way I left them the night before. Makes for a much more restful sleep..:)