How often do you BackUp your website?

hopper · 20th December 2006, 16:07

Yesterday evening I noticed something fishy was going on with my website (Tenerife Times).

I awoke this morning to an email and PM from Syncronicity (Big thanks Leslie) saying URGENT HAVE YOU SEEN YOUR WEB SITE?

When I looked I found that I had been hacked!

The entire site had been taken over by someone else.

Well I can tell you that didn't half wake me up. And I sent out emails to one or two people who I know who could possibly help me.

It turns out that all that was needed was to re-install the site

and then patch the areas where I am vulnerable, changing permissions and such - I hope I have cracked it but you never know until the next time and I will spend the next few days checking for leaks etc.

Luckily for me, something had prompted me to take a full backup of my site only on Saturday night, as a consequence, the new install of my site is reasonably up to date and I have only lost 1 article (Sorry Leslie).

The reason for the post is to ask, how often do people back up their sites? I have recently got into the habit of backing up my database every week and a full back-up every month. Please use my example as an exxcuse to carry out a full back-up if you don't do it often.

Cheers

Hopper

KirstyJay · 20th December 2006, 16:10

I do the same. I back up all my sites once a week with a full back up once a month.

treble99 · 20th December 2006, 16:58

We had our servers hacked in Manchester a few weeks ago. Fortunately my biz partner realised something was a miss and shut them down straight away. We only lost 1 hours worth of invoices etc. We got away lightly thank god.

We back up twice a day.

Id love to meet one of these hackers in a dark alley one night. They drive me mad.

Harlequin · 22nd December 2006, 11:19

Hopper

I generally keep 10 back-ups of any data I have
When executing server backups I do a daily (incremnental)
Weekly (full)
Monthly (full) on removable media

KirstyJay · 22nd December 2006, 11:45

It all depends on how much your data changes... my servers do daily backups for me, so if they have a problem they restore everything straight away, however I still prefer to take my own backups weekly of the databases, just to make sure the content is safe and unless any changes are made, that is fine.

I have a backup of all the HTML pages for my sites and I take additional full backups once a month just incase I've missed anything, plus I have it all backed up on my removable HD in case anything REALLY drastic happens.

Therefore, if everything went down at once (which is pretty unlikely) I would still have the monthly backup copy!

hopper · 22nd December 2006, 16:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by Harlequin

Hopper

I generally keep 10 back-ups of any data I have
When executing server backups I do a daily (incremnental)
Weekly (full)
Monthly (full) on removable media

Hi Mick,

Hows things? Your profile says Dewsbury - is that true? Or are you getting some more sun on your back yet?

Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year, let's hope its a good one without any tears!

Sorry for not getting in contact after you called at the shop but we have had a bad time with Jenette's Mother passing away.

I will be in touch soon after the new year.

Have a good'un

Hopper

Harlequin · 22nd December 2006, 18:53

Heading out to Tenerife for a few days tomorrow, then back to the UK to finish a contract and hopefully back in Tenerife towards the end of January.

Synchronicity · 27th December 2006, 17:34

Just tried to log on again to look up some info on diving-

Seems it's been hacked - again!!!

There must be some sort of conspiracy... just when I send Hopper my second article, for the second time, it goes down... does no one want to see my article in print?!

hopper · 3rd January 2007, 00:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by Synchronicity

Just tried to log on again to look up some info on diving-

Seems it's been hacked - again!!!

There must be some sort of conspiracy... just when I send Hopper my second article, for the second time, it goes down... does no one want to see my article in print?!

Hi Leslie,

Just an update, the Turkish Hackers that were giving me SOOOOOO much trouble left a trail when they entered my site. After looking at the raw log files I noticed a pattern (more like it jumped out at me) and was able to fix the problem by working backwards!

See where they come from and fix the holes - I hope!!! They are still coming to the site as my site has been posted on a hackers forum but so far I have been able to repel the invaders - fingers crossed. (5 hack free days!)

Thanks for the look out and tip offs.

And thanks for the article. Yet another great article and advert for your services.

Cheers

Hopper

Synchronicity · 3rd January 2007, 01:07

Whay thankyeau. Thankyeau very much.

The ride to Teide is not THAT impossible you know. I just did it again today.

And last week. And countless other times.

But the first is surely the most difficult. And those are some musings straight out of my ride journal (which I'm now too lazy to keep filling out).

There haven't been any turkish visitors to my site. Not that I'm aware of anyway. All the turkish people I met there were SUPER nice... even this bunch of serious terrorist demonstrators + police didn't shoot me when I was snapping photos like a complete jackass...

I'll have to post some of the photos perhaps.