A client of mine had three websites hosted at BlueHost. One day they were all down. She called BlueHost and they said, “Sorry, due to a hardware failure, all of your files are gone.” Forever, irretrievable, gonzo, later, sayonara, oh, yeah, and sorry about that. Ouch.

So yes, we should be backing up on a regular basis to multiple locations, of course. But I think in the back of our minds we think, “Oh, it’ll be OK. It won’t happen to me.” I guess it’s like getting your house robbed or maybe not thinking there will be an earthquake (I’m writing this at 5:46 in the morning and there was a good jolt here in San Francisco 10 minutes ago … I thought the garbage truck just bumped into the building). It’s not if it will happen, it’s just a matter of time.

I guess I’m just incredulous. I think GoDaddy has some sort of “emergency” restore service where, for something like $150, you can get all of your files back. If your sites are history, $150 sounds like a bargain.

BlueHost says that backups are your responsibility and yep, they sure are. They are our files, we should give them as much attention as we feel they’re worth. If we don’t care too much about the content on our site, no worries, nothing lost. But if you care about what’s on your site, please back up your files.