Backup
A restorable copy of the site. The difference between a mistake and a weekend of rebuilding.
What does Backup mean?
A stored copy of your website that can be restored if a page is deleted, an update breaks the layout, or the host has a bad day.
Also called: site backup, daily backup
What is actually saved
A useful backup includes the pages, the images, and the configuration that makes them a site, taken automatically and kept somewhere other than the live server alone. A folder of photos on the owner's laptop is a start. It is not a backup of the launched site.
Plugins that say they back up to the same disk as the site fail together with the site. Ask where the copy lives and whether anyone has restored it once. A backup that has never been restored is a rumor.
Daily, on our hosting
Artol hosting includes daily backups along with SSL and two small content updates a month, for $249/mo. The point of the daily copy is ordinary disaster: a bad edit, a deleted page, a problem on the host. It is not a version history of every sentence you considered.
You do not need to install a backup plugin on our sites or pay a second tool for the same job. If you are on WordPress that you maintain yourself, the plugin or the host's snapshot is your problem to verify.
What a backup will not do
It will not move you off a builder by itself. Builder exports are often a file of content, not a restorable designed site. Treat a move as a website migration, with the words copied while the old plan is still active.
It also will not save a business that never owned its domain name. Restoring pages does not help if you cannot point the name at them. Keep the registrar login in the same mental drawer as the backup.
An example
A cafe changed a homepage hero and accidentally unpublished the menu page on a Friday morning. The daily backup from the night before put the menu back before lunch. The hero experiment could wait. The lunch menu could not.
Questions we get asked
How far back do the daily copies go?
Far enough to undo a recent mistake. Do not treat hosting backups as a permanent archive of every menu you have ever run. If you need a record for your own files, keep a copy of the text when you care about that history.
Can I download a backup myself?
Ask us if you want a copy of the current pages and media. The operational restore is something we do, so a partial download does not become a second broken site. We reply within one business day.
