Rule #1 of website design:  "Back up, back up, back up!"
Anyone who has ever used computers will tell you that they can let you down when you least expect it. In this day and age, the aforementioned statement has sadly become an everyday part of all our lives. When you are planning and creating your website, one of the things you should work into your plan is backing up your website's content.

One of the best ways to manage your website is by creating it on your computer in a directory on your hard drive. After you have created your website on your hard drive, you can upload it to your Crosswinds webspace and keep your local hard drive copy as an automatic backup for any successive changes you may need to make. If you back up your files often, you will always have the most up-to-date copy of your website on your own computer. These can be easily edited and re-uploaded to your Crosswinds site once the edits have been completed.

As a part of your website back up plan, you should do at least one (if not both) of these two things:

• Store one copy of your website on your computer for easy access and editing purposes, so that you can easily update your files without having to first download them, make your changes, and then after that, re-upload the files.
• Store a duplicate copy of your website on removable media so that accidents (e.g. theft, fire, power grid blackout, computer virus, burst water main, inexplicable anomalies) won't destroy all your files.

A backup takes only a short amount of time. Re-creating your computer files and your website from scratch takes much longer.

Saving your site to your hard drive:
If you don't currently have a copy of your website files, and you have access to FTP (Crosswinds' Pro, Premium, and Basic accounts all can use FTP), the easiest way to get copies of your files is to FTP them from the Crosswinds server back to your hard drive. From there you can back them up to a secondary removable storage device, such as those listed below.

If you can't use FTP, you can still save your files by opening each page in a browser, and choosing 'File=>Save Page As' from the browser's menu. Choose to save as file type 'Web Page Complete' so that all of the images and included scripts will be saved along with it. This method won't retain the directory structure of your pages-- so you'll need to reset your links and rearrange the files on your hard drive if you want the site to be functional offline. (See our tutorial for how to arrange your website files.) But at least you'll have the raw files in your possession.

There are third-party software programs and utilities (such as Flypage) which will do the backup process for your website automatically. Before signing up to use third-party software for creating backup copies of your files, please look to see what each utility's server requirements are. If the software requires installation of CGI, Perl, or any other server-side scripting, then only Pro accounts at Crosswinds will be able to use it. If in doubt, consult your hosting plan features to make sure that your program is supported.

Please also note that any third-party service might not be a free service. Always read the FAQ and documentation of any software or service before you use it.

Removable Media Backup options:
There is a wide range of different technologies available for the backup procedure. What you choose will probably depend on how big your website is. You could select:

• Floppy disk (holds 1.44kb of data)
• Iomega Zip or Jaz Drives (100MB, 250MB, 750MB, 1GB, 2GB)
• External Hard Drive (20GB through 180GB)
• Mini USB Drive (64MB, 128MB, or 256MB)
• Tape Backup (suitable for multi-gigabyte sites)
• Mirror site on another web server
• CD-R / CD-RW (Some CD drives can only read CD-R and not CD-RW. Check your system's documentation to see if your writable CD drive supports CD-RW.)

Before you purchase expensive backup software for any of this, check your Operating System and see what kind of internal backup utilities it includes. Most operating systems include a basic backup utility which can be used to back up your web files or your entire hard drive. The newer versions will have the ability to back up not only to floppies but to CD, DVD, and other media.

There are many other forms of backup for your website that you could use. To find the one that's right for you, a little research will need to be done on your part to make sure that the form of backup you choose will work on your system. What you choose will also depend on both the size of your site and the frequency of your backups. Backup procedures should relate to the frequency with which you update your website. For example, if you are changing your website every day, then you should backup those changes every evening. If you change your website less frequently then you may back up less frequently - weekly or monthly perhaps.

Whatever option you choose, regular backup procedures will ensure that if your computer or your web server goes down, you will be protected from complete data loss. Back up your data regularly and completely.