The biggest disaster that your organization could experience is a total collapse of your website services.
I don’t mean just a blackout of your website hosting because of a power outage but a complete loss because the actual hosting business disappeared.
Sounds nuts or impossible? Trust me it’s not. I’ve had it happen to me.
The 2 Things:
Every hosting provider out there has had some issues with connectivity or a power outage; that’s a minor annoyance (or big one) but can and is typically fixed soon.
But what if the company just vanishes? Just disappears due to bankruptcy or shady dealings or whatever? What will you do?
Here are two suggestions that help prevent you from experiencing catastrophic loss if this ever happened:
- Backup – This is so obvious but most people don’t do it. Back up your data consistently.
- Register Domain URLs with “big” companies – It’s a common practice to register a domain name with the same company that’s hosting it. The reason is obvious: 1 place to manage instead of 2. But consider registering your domain name with GoDaddy or Register.com since it’s highly unlikely that these guys will ever go out of business.
There are certainly some more things you can do but these are the big ones.
How are you doing on this list? Got any more tips?
[Image from Millzero]
I don’t agree. That is not the biggest disaster. Sure it’s a problem but unless you exist solely (as in nowhere else) online then maybe.
However having valid and verified backups kept offsite is certainly one way of ensuring your organisation can recover from any disaster.
Off site backups are awesome. RAID is too, but only if it’s used for redundancy and not for making 2 little drives one bigger drive.
good point!
Using GoDaddy *is* a big IT disaster.
As far as the web goes, my church site is hosted on Network Solutions and they do backups of our sites. We also pay to have our site and server monitored for hacks or exploits (we were a victim before we were a customer).
As far as Data backups in house we have redundant backups and offsite backups.
ouch.
Yesterday a local company had a server lock up, taking down their entire network (including POS machines) AND their website. First mistake is having mission critical programs use a single, problem-prone server (it goes down a lot). Second mistake is hosting their website in-house using a single internet connection that is shared with the entire campus.
My suggestions? 1-use a server run by an established hosting company, and 2-considering the major difference in highs and lows of activity this company has, I’d look into combining at least 2 servers as a cloud. If one fails just have the other powerful enough to handle the load by itself until the first can be fixed. Plus, additional servers can be switched on during busy times to handle the additional load.
BTW, this company has no IT department. Just a single person (who isn’t in IT) who was appointed to take care of the network because he “somewhat knew what [he] was doing” (his words).
yikes!
Great reminder. Backing up.
you have to!
I am a telecommuter and write articles on weekends to raise extra cash. I have been burned without backups twice, and now I will only use a mainstream hosting company. Complete data loss happens more than you think.
This is the problem: you can backup your articles, posts, and WordPress pages, but what about the fantastic comments from followers. You comments are critical to success on some many levels. I strongly recopmmend that you use the hosting company’s backup service and backup to your PC. Then use professional backup software for data protection and restoration.
I got a computer worm recently and now I am a serious believer in professional restoration.
Josh.