You must have come across the terms ‘web archive’ and ‘back up’. Often, they come in the same context when it comes to long term data securing. Most of the time they are considered the same, though they hugely differ. In case you can’t decide whether to back up or archive your website, this article will show you why both are equally important and why you must do both.
Why do you need a website’s back up?
The main purpose to back a website is to keep a copy of its previous version. This is done to prevent any disaster in case you delete something important by mistake or if the webserver causes any trouble.
This is usually a complex process that cannot be carried out without proper knowledge. Exactly why you require experts to recover your website from any mishaps. The backups consist of files, databases, server configurations and the codes used for the website development process.
Why do you need a web archive?
A website is archived to maintain a visual track of the progress and modifications that you have made on the website. This is mainly done for future references and improvements. This process does not require much technical knowledge and can be easily carried out by the person maintaining the backups of the website.
The benefits of back up and archives
Using the backups of the website, you can restore the website anytime there is a server failure, unexpected deletion or any kind of malware or virus attack. These small mishaps are quite common these days. Imagine what would happen if your precious website data is lost! A website backup will save you from this disaster.
On the contrary, the web archives come in handy in tracking the changes you have made on your website. It may happen that sometime in the past a particular element on your website was highly successful. But now your website isn’t doing very well. You might want to refer to the previous version of your website and spot which element you wish to bring back.
This can be done by using a web archive. You can even show the designer how that particular element was featured so that it can be designed in a similar way. This way you can improve your website traffic and business.
Back up v/s web archiving: the process involved
In order to back up a website, you need to have an explicit understanding of the file system, database tables, and the recovery process. This is important for the successful restoration of the website.
Where the recovery process involved in website backup is a tedious job, the process of archiving the web pages is insanely simple with the help of Stillio. You just need to add the web pages you wish to archive to your Stillio account and fix a frequency of archiving them. Stillio allows you to archive your website automatically on an hourly, daily or monthly basis as you wish.
Visiting the older versions of your website on Stillio is again extremely simple. What’s More? You can even download any image or video from the screenshots in case you desire. There is also the option of automatic syncing to your Dropbox for even smoother access.
The goal of archiving is not to restore the lost data quickly. The goal instead is to store data and organize it in such a way that you can easily search through it in order to extract a piece of particular information.
Lastly!
You must have understood that both backups and archives are important in their own places. They are extremely crucial for the development of your website. They both together are an integral part of any modern business so that it can easily amend the mistakes.
Investing some time and money in these important strategies is a very good practice as they will save you from all kinds of manmade, hardware or natural disasters.