As you are probably aware I like to try plugins and sometimes that messes things up. It’s nice to have a backup to restore and when I saw Rocket.net has 14 days of backups that was a big selling point to me.
It doesn’t help that I will optimize my database as well by deleting things that I don’t think I am using. At times that has caused me problems as well. Unfortunately, after I try 6 or more plugins it can get confusing what is what, and so when I try to clean up the mess I sometimes delete the wrong thing. Having a site backup has been amazing.
I have had to do site restores probably a dozen or so times over the 14 years I have had the site. Often it was an issue I could have fixed but it would have taken longer. There were times were the site restore was corrupt. Then I had to go back a day or more to find a working one. I have lost articles that I have written because of this which is fine because I am learning and this is a project site.
I have never been at a web host that offered so many site backups to the cheapest plan like this. I feel more secure knowing that even if backups had a problem for a few days there is an overwhelming odds that I can restore to close to where I was.
Yes I know I could use a staging site to test things but again this is not a true production environment. Nothing will happen if I don’t get out a post. Maybe you will get a break, and that is a good thing! For a corporate client, I would suggest using that but I don’t mind this being both the dev/production website.
It is also more like what is happening in the real world. In the real world most people I have encountered don’t have test/dev systems and their production system is also their test/dev system. They start with a small group and see how that works and then roll out based on that initial experience. In almost all companies but one, they didn’t have a dev/test environment which was unfortunate for their uptime.
Now if you work for a corporate environment you know this, but the small business owner may not. I have worked with companies of all sizes but you can’t assume they know things. Everyone would benefit from having a test/dev site so don’t interpret my words in that way. Ask for IT help and your site can be more stable and less need to rely on a backup.
Is there a downside to having this many backups? Nope. I mentioned before that Rocket.net only cares about the utilization of the CDN and how many GB you transfer. I have been with them for a week and I have used 1 GB out of 50GB for the month. I am not worried about the costs of my site.
Clicking on this link below helps me keep my lights on.
