Daily backup which includes the database and content are performed every night. FULL site backups are different. They are used only when we need to move the site to another hosting server, or if the site was hacked and we could not restore from a daily backup.
We cannot restore parts of the site from a full backup. Full backups are done every three months and stored on another server at our request.
Some good points there. In the early days of the forum, we opted for a simple "meat and potatoes" design. The content and the members were always the priority. We will be updating the site, and possibly looking into investing in some more storage space to enable more photos to be hosted here.
The advantages are as mentioned - hacked photobucket account etc. The only real disadvantage is that if the site had a technical issue and we had to revert to backups, it would not restore the pictures, as they are not backed up. The last backup of the site was a whopping 12 Gig.
But we are aware that the site needs upgrading, and useful threads like this help us plan for the future.
does your host do regular backups?? id say they would do it at least every 24 hours and that should include every bit of data including pictures. our host used to do them every 6 hours. we had our site hacked many many times, and we used to have to resort to host data, it was almost impossible for us to do our own backups as you stated 12gig is allot. we could have paid for an hourly backup service. but 6 hours of data loss was annoying but not a killer. you should ask what their server backups are, if its like 12 hours that would be exceptable imo, just remember you should be able to contact your server and ask them to resort to the latest backup if your site gets hacked and destroyed.
hmm thats a bit average on the servers behalf. might be worth looking around and asking questions about guys who do full backups that at request can be restored in the event of huge failure or hacking. this would be a D.I.Y style server but they should do full backups at least every 24 hours that can be restored at request. because it would be nightmare and almost impossible for you to do 12gig backups constantly. seriously something you should ask about with them or say you are looking else where. even if they change you a fee to revert back to the latest backup that would be cheaper and easier than you having to download 12 gig of forum then upload it again. but allot of hosts offer this service as a sales point even do it your self style hosting.
see if you are hacked and part of your forum is say deleted or destroyed, if the host just reloads the full backup then the only data lost would have been lost between now and the latest backup done by them. and they usually keep more than one backup, they might keep the last 3 full backups or sometimes more. at one point this used to happen to us so much i used to call it time warping lol, reason being when the host loaded up the latest backup the forum suddenly appears with every post and what the forum looked like 12 hours earlier, lol
btw this is a neat little forum, and well setup and easy to use
