You’d think the answer is obvious, wouldn’t you?
Especially when it’s the hub of your business, and responsible for bringing in the majority of your income.
So why am I even asking a question like that?
Because I recently had an old client contact me and ask me to look at why she wasn’t receiving emails.
I turned out that the hosting account was due for renewal more than a month ago, and as per the terms of service of the host, the account had been deleted.
Not only were the emails gone, but also the site.
And the backups.
No way to recover it!
Now, there were some extenuating circumstances – there was a lot going on in her life and she had been distracted for a while.
But what I find interesting is that with this host, the site would have went offline within days of the payment being missed. All files were maintained on the server for 30 days, and if a payment had been made in that time the website would have went back online as if nothing had happened.
How do I know this?
Because I had already recovered her site in this grace period twice in the last 6 months.
You’d think this would have been enough of a wake up call and she would have enabled auto renewal on the account so it didn’t happen again.
But sadly, no 🙁
Now that the realisation she has lost everything she has been building for the last 8 years is setting in she is distraught (definitely not what she needs on top of all else that has been going on for her).
I feel for her. I do.
But the reality is that you are responsible for your own life. And if something is important to you then it is up to you to protect it.
Especially if it is your main source of income.
Life will distract us all at times. So it’s important our business doesn’t fall apart while we deal with those distractions.
We’ll talk about how we can set up systems to sell on auto-pilot in future emails, but for now, let’s look at what you can do to protect your website itself:
- Make sure your hosting account, and domain registrations, are set up to auto-renew. That way, even if you’re distracted, your website (and emails) will stay online.
- Update the card details stored on your hosting and domain registration accounts as soon as you receive a new card (yes, I’ve seen this one catch out people too).
- As added protection, regularly take a full backup of your site and store it locally (on your computer AND a backup drive). That way, if the worst does happen, you can be up and running again quickly on a new account. I recommend you do this at least quarterly, or any time you make any major changes.
- Set up an uptime monitor that will notify you as soon as your site goes offline. There are plenty of free services, like Uptime Robot. Just make sure to send the notifications to an email that is NOT on the same domain as your website (some hosts will take emails offline with the site).
It may also be worth paying someone to look after your site if it’s that important to you. That way, you can get on with your business (and any curve balls life throws you) and rest assured your site will not add to your headaches.
If this is something that is of interest to you, then check out our Website Care options.
