How To Protect Your Online Business And Website From Disaster
How To Protect Your Online Business And Website From Disaster
As I have said many times over the past 14 years, they Internet provides the heretofore undreamed of benefits of an almost genuinely level playing field, which means that almost anyone, anywhere can set up shop and not only survive but thrive online. That’s a good thing, right? Not always. It’s a good thing for the good and honorable people of the world who want to build an online business. Unfortunately it is also a fetid breeding ground for the ethically challenged, including liars, thieves, scam artists and the good-meaning, but seriously incompetent people, who are unwilling or unable to fix their mistakes and prefer to hide their head in the sand.
Where does that leave you as a potential business owner? It leaves you with a strong necessity for guarding yourself and your business. How do you do that? You do that, first and foremost, by building a secure home for your business by applying the following in equal measure:
* Common sense,
* Preliminary research,
* Taking basic precautions,
* Diversifying potential risk factors,
* Assiduous use of Golden Rule!
In the virtual world your website is your most valuable asset. It is the face you present to the world. Use common sense when you first set it up. Come up with a strategic plan and follow it. Try to think of all the contingencies “What can go wrong and how do I prevent that, or recover from it.” before you begin, and have a plan in place.
For example: Research your hosting company and see what the online world has to say about them. I host with several different providers so if disaster strikes, "in most cases" I can be up and running again within minutes or hours. I strongly recommend that you use a fairly standard panel host is Lypha and I am quite satisfied with them, but if I ever decide that I am dissatisfied provider.
Common Sense: One thing I strongly, strongly…(once more for emphasis to make sure you get the point) strongly recommend to all of my clients is that you never, ever purchase or register your domain name and hosting from the same provider. Why? Why is truly a matter of plain old common sense. In the online world you are at the mercy of your hosting provider. If they suddenly go out of business, if a hurricane, or tsunami, or war, or fire, or nuclear meltdown inadvertently takes them out of commission, or if they just plain prove to be unreliable jerks from hell who provide lousy service or hold your domain name hostage–your ability to do business goes with them! You can find a list of providers that I and several of my clients use at Spun Silk Hosting.
Believe me, I have had at least three different clients who have had their domain name held hostage by their hosting provider. In two of the three cases fixing the problem meant that they had to purchase a new domain name and in essence start all over again from scratch. In the third case the hosting provider allowed them to take their domain name with them to a different hosting provider, but that occurred because the script they purchased would not run on their current provider and they were keeping their main hosting account with that provider. I ended up hosting the script for them for free so they would not have to purchase a second hosting account to run one script.
So if you want to reduce your dependence on someone else’s reliability or good will you do several things upfront.
#1 Never ever buy your domain name from the same provider whom you purchase your hosting from because the quickest way to recover from disaster is to have the ability to simply log into your domain registration account and forward your domain name to a new hosting account somewhere else.
Research: Always research the person you are doing business with…before you spend any money with them. For example: I provide safe and secure third-party Domain Registration for you at Spun Silk Domains and since I’ve been actively in business online for 14 years as of this writing you probably will not find a more reliable provider than myself. You can check that statement out by going to the Internet Archive and typing Spun Silk Web Design into their WayBack machine. Online research is not difficult simply go to Google, MSN, Yahoo and Dogpile and Cuil type in the name of the business or person you are researching.
The reason I suggest several websites is simple, you will find different pages indexed on different sites. Also, I will strongly caution you to consider the source if you find either a negative or a positive comment that seems out of sync with everything else you find. Anyone can post either a GlowingTtestimonial or a Lambasting Tirade, you have to use your own common sense to sort the wheat from the chaff, always take the majority of the comments and look at where they were posted and by whom, and take into account any proof that is offered. Also keep in mind that it is best to dig deep and not just take the first couple of links you find to heart, because they may very well be first because they are affiliate links that someone is earning commissions for posting, or they may simply rank high in the search engines because they have a lot of affiliate links pointing to them.
Precautions: Do not rely on your hosting provider to back up your website. Always do that yourself at least weekly or whenever you make a major change. It is very easy to do if you have a Cpanel provider. Simply make a local folder on your computer, then log into your Cpanel account, Click on the Backups icon and make separate back ups of your website and all of your databases and save them to your local computer. It is not rocket science and it saves you from being completely at the mercy of someone else’s sloppy business practices or bad fortune.
Diversifying To Mitigate Potential Risk Factors: Just as it is easier to keep from drowning if you can spread your body mass out over a greater surface area (i.e. do a full body float) it is easier to keep from losing your whole business if you increase your options for a quick recovery. Personally backing up your data is, of course, number one on that list. Number two on that list is purchasing a second domain name, or a second version of your domain name. At the annual cost of a domain name, that is insurance you cannot afford to pass up!
For example: When you purchase MyName.com also purchase MyName.net or My-Name.Com or MyName.info or MyName.org. There are two schools of thought on this. You can either let the extra name sit, unused against the day you might need it, or you can forward it to the same location of your primary website (A practice which most search engines still frown upon.) or you can put different context on it and use it to drive traffic to your primary website. This practice also keeps a competitor from purchasing it so if you have a great domain name that you want to protect you probably want to try to buy as many “main” (.com .net .org .info) versions of it as you can. Remember though, you cannot protect it completely because in this day and age someone can probably just buy it with a different country extension or otherwise come up with a close enough approximation of it to compete with you or do you harm if they choose to do so. So the upshot is, do not get too paranoid and waste too much money on purchasing different versions of your domain name.
Assiduous Use of the Golden Rule: One of the greatest potentials for online disaster is to make someone who has nothing to lose angry. Anonymous revenge runs rampant because it is so easy to throw up a fake website ! So follow the Golden Rule and do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It may not save you from the jerks of this world, but at least you will have a clear conscious and good defense if you need to defend yourself in the eyes of the world.
Smiles & Good Fortune,
Teresa
It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent.
– W. Somerset Maugham (1874 ? 1965) Of Human Bondage, 1915
How To Protect Your Online Business And Website From Disaster - To learn more about this author, visit Teresa Bohannon's Website.
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Let me begin by saying that no one can possibly tell you all the ways to protect yourself from an online business disaster…but there are several basic precautions you can take that can prevent or mitigate a majority of the things that can go wrong. How? By reducing the many ways that you and your business can be vulnerable to the whims, failings and bad business practices of others.
As I have said many times over the past 14 years, they Internet provides the heretofore undreamed of benefits of an almost genuinely level playing field, which means that almost anyone, anywhere can set up shop and not only survive but thrive online. That’s a good thing, right? Not always. It’s a good thing for the good and honorable people of the world who want to build an online business. Unfortunately it is also a fetid breeding ground for the ethically challenged, including liars, thieves, scam artists and the good-meaning, but seriously incompetent people, who are unwilling or unable to fix their mistakes and prefer to hide their head in the sand.
Where does that leave you as a potential business owner? It leaves you with a strong necessity for guarding yourself and your business. How do you do that? You do that, first and foremost, by building a secure home for your business by applying the following in equal measure:
* Common sense,
* Preliminary research,
* Taking basic precautions,
* Diversifying potential risk factors,
* Assiduous use of Golden Rule!
In the virtual world your website is your most valuable asset. It is the face you present to the world. Use common sense when you first set it up. Come up with a strategic plan and follow it. Try to think of all the contingencies “What can go wrong and how do I prevent that, or recover from it.” before you begin, and have a plan in place.
For example: Research your hosting company and see what the online world has to say about them. I host with several different providers so if disaster strikes, "in most cases" I can be up and running again within minutes or hours. I strongly recommend that you use a fairly standard panel host is Lypha and I am quite satisfied with them, but if I ever decide that I am dissatisfied provider.
Common Sense: One thing I strongly, strongly…(once more for emphasis to make sure you get the point) strongly recommend to all of my clients is that you never, ever purchase or register your domain name and hosting from the same provider. Why? Why is truly a matter of plain old common sense. In the online world you are at the mercy of your hosting provider. If they suddenly go out of business, if a hurricane, or tsunami, or war, or fire, or nuclear meltdown inadvertently takes them out of commission, or if they just plain prove to be unreliable jerks from hell who provide lousy service or hold your domain name hostage–your ability to do business goes with them! You can find a list of providers that I and several of my clients use at Spun Silk Hosting.
Believe me, I have had at least three different clients who have had their domain name held hostage by their hosting provider. In two of the three cases fixing the problem meant that they had to purchase a new domain name and in essence start all over again from scratch. In the third case the hosting provider allowed them to take their domain name with them to a different hosting provider, but that occurred because the script they purchased would not run on their current provider and they were keeping their main hosting account with that provider. I ended up hosting the script for them for free so they would not have to purchase a second hosting account to run one script.
So if you want to reduce your dependence on someone else’s reliability or good will you do several things upfront.
#1 Never ever buy your domain name from the same provider whom you purchase your hosting from because the quickest way to recover from disaster is to have the ability to simply log into your domain registration account and forward your domain name to a new hosting account somewhere else.
Research: Always research the person you are doing business with…before you spend any money with them. For example: I provide safe and secure third-party Domain Registration for you at Spun Silk Domains and since I’ve been actively in business online for 14 years as of this writing you probably will not find a more reliable provider than myself. You can check that statement out by going to the Internet Archive and typing Spun Silk Web Design into their WayBack machine. Online research is not difficult simply go to Google, MSN, Yahoo and Dogpile and Cuil type in the name of the business or person you are researching.
The reason I suggest several websites is simple, you will find different pages indexed on different sites. Also, I will strongly caution you to consider the source if you find either a negative or a positive comment that seems out of sync with everything else you find. Anyone can post either a GlowingTtestimonial or a Lambasting Tirade, you have to use your own common sense to sort the wheat from the chaff, always take the majority of the comments and look at where they were posted and by whom, and take into account any proof that is offered. Also keep in mind that it is best to dig deep and not just take the first couple of links you find to heart, because they may very well be first because they are affiliate links that someone is earning commissions for posting, or they may simply rank high in the search engines because they have a lot of affiliate links pointing to them.
Precautions: Do not rely on your hosting provider to back up your website. Always do that yourself at least weekly or whenever you make a major change. It is very easy to do if you have a Cpanel provider. Simply make a local folder on your computer, then log into your Cpanel account, Click on the Backups icon and make separate back ups of your website and all of your databases and save them to your local computer. It is not rocket science and it saves you from being completely at the mercy of someone else’s sloppy business practices or bad fortune.
Diversifying To Mitigate Potential Risk Factors: Just as it is easier to keep from drowning if you can spread your body mass out over a greater surface area (i.e. do a full body float) it is easier to keep from losing your whole business if you increase your options for a quick recovery. Personally backing up your data is, of course, number one on that list. Number two on that list is purchasing a second domain name, or a second version of your domain name. At the annual cost of a domain name, that is insurance you cannot afford to pass up!
For example: When you purchase MyName.com also purchase MyName.net or My-Name.Com or MyName.info or MyName.org. There are two schools of thought on this. You can either let the extra name sit, unused against the day you might need it, or you can forward it to the same location of your primary website (A practice which most search engines still frown upon.) or you can put different context on it and use it to drive traffic to your primary website. This practice also keeps a competitor from purchasing it so if you have a great domain name that you want to protect you probably want to try to buy as many “main” (.com .net .org .info) versions of it as you can. Remember though, you cannot protect it completely because in this day and age someone can probably just buy it with a different country extension or otherwise come up with a close enough approximation of it to compete with you or do you harm if they choose to do so. So the upshot is, do not get too paranoid and waste too much money on purchasing different versions of your domain name.
Assiduous Use of the Golden Rule: One of the greatest potentials for online disaster is to make someone who has nothing to lose angry. Anonymous revenge runs rampant because it is so easy to throw up a fake website ! So follow the Golden Rule and do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It may not save you from the jerks of this world, but at least you will have a clear conscious and good defense if you need to defend yourself in the eyes of the world.
Smiles & Good Fortune,
Teresa
It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent.
– W. Somerset Maugham (1874 ? 1965) Of Human Bondage, 1915
How To Protect Your Online Business And Website From Disaster - To learn more about this author, visit Teresa Bohannon's Website.
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