So, you’ve set up your website, you’ve linked it to all your social media accounts, you’ve invested in some top quality SEO to get your site ranking highly on the search engines. You’re attracting the right visitors and everything’s ticking over nicely…
Then one day you log on to find that your site has gone…. vanished in a puff of pixels – so what went wrong?
It could be a number of things…
Your hosting provider has suffered a failure
In this case you should contact your hosts to find out what’s going on. It might be that they have scheduled down time, or it could be something more serious that requires you to move your site to another host. They may have suffered a server failure which requires your site to be completely restored. Get the facts from them and see if they can help.
Malicious software has been found on your site
If malicious software is found on your site, it’s likely to be blocked until you remove it. Finding the malicious script is usually straight forward and can be removed quickly, but often you’ll need a backup to replace the files that have been altered.
Hackers have taken your site down
More and more frequently, hackers are finding ways to access websites and cause damage, both to the core files and to the database.
Make sure you have a backup plan
Every WordPress website is made up of two parts – the core files (i.e. WordPress itself, your theme and plugin files, etc.) and the database (i.e. your posts, pages, users, and settings). Replacing your core files is usually straight forward, but if your database is damaged then things can get tricky.
As best practice, you should have copies of both your core files and the database saved in a number of locations, to be sure that you can access them when needed.
So if the worst happens and you think you’ve lost your site, you need to know:
- Who to call – do you know who hosts your website and how to contact them?
- Your site is backed up – both core and database files
- Where your backup files are stored – can you access them readily?
- Your backup-backup plan – if your hosts can’t help, who should you call? Can the developers that built your site help?
Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail
If you’ve lost your site and didn’t have a backup it will be much more difficult to restore, but it’s usually possible.
If you need help to set up a backup plan, speak to our team today. Call us on 0117 230 3322 or email [email protected].
