As soon as I get a new client, I create a website information sheet for them. I collect information from the client for products and services they already use and add to that sheet whenever something is added to one of their domains.

However, in my years of working with website clients, I’ve come to discover that the clients are not nearly as organized as I am. If they have existing websites, nine times out of ten they can’t tell me where their critical website information is or how to access it, or it’s scattered in different documents and emails throughout their computer.

If you are one my clients, don’t worry. I have this information for you. You should still have a copy of your own though. (Email me if you don’t.)

If you are not one of my clients, that’s okay. I’ll still share. Save this example website info sheet to your computer and update it with your information. Send me a message if you need help.

Preventing email spam for my clients’ websites is something that I try very hard to do now that I’ve learned what NOT to do with an email address. However, I learned these lessons the hard way and I’m still paying the price. I have corrected my ways and it has cut down on some of the spam, but obviously not enough. I wonder if I’m missing something and the spam programs are still finding me or if my email address is just floating around on some “spam me” email list somewhere that I’ll never get off of. Do I really have to change all of my business email addresses? (If you have an answer to that question, please comment and tell me.)

So, how did I end up with over 1000 spam emails in one week? Here’s a list of what NOT to do with your email address:

• Do NOT set up a catch-all/default email address for your domain.
• Do NOT directly publish your email address on your website using a mailto tag.
• Do NOT use your primary email address in the bio box of the articles you use for article marketing purposes. (DUH!)

 
Since there is no point in rewriting a good article on preventing email spam, here’s a link to some good tips:
http://labnol.blogspot.com/2006/03/hide-your-email-address-on-websites.html

Of course, the thing that I hate the most isn’t the 1500+ spam emails in my inbox. What bothers me is the fact that these rotten spammers are now using my email address to spam other people and I’m getting blamed for it! That is not how I do business!

If you have other tips on preventing email spam, please comment and leave your advice.

The standard View Cart button code is as follows:

To change the button into a text link, substitute the business value from the button code into this text link code:

Did I have a website backup of all my changes? Nope!

I immediately emailed my hosting company and asked them what they could restore for me. Unfortunately, they had just replaced some drives and the most recent backup for my site was three weeks ago. None of what I really needed was going to be on those backups. I had to redo all of my changes.

This prompted me to post an article by Lynette Chandler, “Website Backups and Why You Need to do Them”. The article reminded me of a time when one of my client’s websites was hacked. Most of her website was overwritten by malicious code and her web host didn’t have a complete backup for her either. (Luckily, I did.)

These things really do happen folks! And you need to protect yourself.

So, how do you backup your website?

(By the way, if this is all too techie for you and you are concerned about the security of your website data, contact me and I can probably do your backups for you.)

cPanel Backup Wizard

 
If your web host provides a cPanel type control panel, you can perform your website backups using the backup wizard in the files section of the control panel.

1. Access your cPanel by going to http://yourwebsiteurl.com/cpanel and logging in with your hosting username and password. (Page not found means either your don’t have cPanel or you forgot to replace the url in that link with your own website’s url.)

2. Find the Backup Wizard in the Files section and click on it.

3. Click on the Backup button.

4. Click on Home Directory under Select Partial Backup to back up your website files. (This type of backup makes it easier to restore later.)

5. Click on Home Directory to download your backup file.

6. Click Save when prompted and save the file to a folder on your computer where you can find it later if you need it.

7. If you have a database associated with your website (WordPress for example), you will want to repeat this process (Go Back button) and click on MySQL Databases to backup your database.

8. Log out of your control panel. You’re done.

FTP Website Backup

 
When I need to do just a file backup (no database) and the hosting company hasn’t provided an easy way to do website backups, I use FTP software. I personally use CuteFTP Pro, so I am including basic instructions for that here.

1. Open CuteFTP and connect to the desired account.

2. Navigate to and open the folder that you want to backup.

3. On the toolbar, click on Tools, then Folder Tools, then Backup Remote Folders.

4. Browse to find the local folder you want to store your backup in, ensure you have the remote folder listed that you want to backup, and click the Include subfolders box. Click Next.

5. Choose your compression type and click Next.

6. Either select Run Now or schedule reoccurring backups.

7. Click Finish and close CuteFTP. You’re done.

Other Website Backup Options

 
1. If your website is small and you don’t have a database to worry about, you can use your hosting file manager to copy all of your files to your computer.

2. If you have access to phpMyAdmin, you could export your database and save the exported file to your computer. (Beyond the scope of this article.)

3. Contact your web hosting provider and inquire about their website backup procedures.

by Lynette Chandler

1. You are cleaning up your discussion forum or message board and accidentally deleted or ‘prune’ something that you didn’t mean to.

2. Your web hosting company goes out of business or sells their business to a company you prefer not to be hosted with.

3. Your site goes down for a few hours or even a day at a time because you host is upgrading and having lots of downtime. Don’t think it could happen to you? This happened to me!

4. You work with several people ‘live’ on a website. They accidentally overwrote your work and you didn’t save a copy of the page.

5. You need to put your site back to the way it was before you did anything because after trying to upgrade the software or scripts it’s not working right.

6. Your web host holds your site or domain captive. Pending your dispute, you need to setup your site all over again even in another place and domain.

7. Your website gets hacked and everything was deleted. I’ve experienced this. While not everything was deleted, it was a large enough chunk. Also, in those early days, I had just learned to edit websites live and had no copy on my hard drive.

8. Your web host might keep backups, but they may not be the ones you need. For example I was once working with a site owner who’s site I managed and we needed to restore a database. We went to the web host and asked for help. Then we were told the host only had three databases to choose from and not were the one we needed. It was disappointing because they had one that came before the one we needed and one that came after. We had to go with the oldest one and lose a few days worth of content. This could have been avoided if we had done our own backups.

9. While moving web hosts, due to a misunderstanding, the old account was canceled and deleted too early.

10. Your web host reviewed your site and decides you have violated their terms of service and shuts down your account in short notice.

11. You uploaded the wrong site or folder and overwrote the previous one. When using FTP this is pretty easy to do if you have a large list of sites to publish to and you’re doing the updating when you’re just a bit too tired.

12. You or someone reinstalled FrontPage extensions and now your redirects, error pages, fancy URL’s and what not don’t work anymore. You see, when you reinstall FrontPage extensions, it re-creates all your .htaccess files. That means, any customizations you had will also be lost.

13. You had custom programming done to your scripts. Your new web master upgraded the script and can’t remember where or what all the modifications are. Worst, he/she doesn’t know how to re-program those customizations.

14. A hacker inserted malicious code on all your website’s pages and you need to rollback to the previous good version.

15. While moving your blog the database wasn’t copied and now you can’t gain access back into the site.

It’s your responsibility to have all the backups you need for your website, don’t leave this important task for someone else and ‘hope’ they do it! Get your websites backed up now and you’ll be so happy you did if you ever run into any minor or major problems.

Lynette Chandler helps entrepreneurs leverage readily available technology for their marketing. Learn to apply the power of technology to your marketing

Article Source: GreatArticlesforMoms.com

Related Article: How to Backup Your Website