Backups: the boring superpower
The difference between a bad afternoon and a lost project is one snapshot you can actually restore.
Everyone nods along when backups are mentioned, then most people don't check theirs until the day they need one. This is a short guide to being the exception, without becoming a person who owns a labelled hard drive.
What a good backup contains
- Your files — themes, uploads, code, configuration.
- Your database — posts, users, orders, settings. Easy to forget, painful to lose.
- A timestamp you understand, and a location that isn't the same server.
- A way to restore it that doesn't require a terminal and a prayer.
On Sling, daily snapshots are taken off the server itself, so a dead server doesn't take the backups with it. On the Sling plan they run hourly, which is roughly the difference between “I lost a day of comments” and “I lost a coffee break”.
Restoring without the drama
Restoring is not the same as reverting your code. A restore puts the files and database back to a single moment, together. That's what you want after a bad plugin update or an accidental delete. Do not try to restore only the database unless you know exactly why — mismatched halves cause strange, hard-to-debug behaviour.
How long should you keep them?
Long enough to cover the time it takes you to notice a problem. For a personal blog, a week is plenty. For a client site with orders, a month is sensible. If you're making big changes, take a manual snapshot right before — it's one click and it becomes the “before” picture.
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