How to keep a copy of the site and where is it better to do it?

Imagine the situation: you are creating a website. You hire a webmaster or do it yourself, spending a lot of money and time on it. You host your brainchild on hosting and you fill it with information, without thinking about the need to save a copy of the site, so as not to lose data.

In one day, not very good for you, you go to your site, but it does not work. You start to find out what's wrong, and, horrified, the data center has burned down or hosted. Or maybe you got a virus and destroyed the data. The loss of information on the site is comparable to the loss of information on the computer. So how do you keep a copy of the site?

Let's look at the definition first. The process of archiving websites is saving the current version of the page or site in the archive for further work with it. For these purposes, specialized software is used. The largest company in the world is the Internet Archive, which we'll talk about below.

For a private archive, you can use offline browsers that have been specifically designed to work offline. They will help to create local copies of individual web pages or entire sites. To them, for example, are:

• Cross-platform HTTrack-browser, which supports 29 world languages and is able to resume interrupted downloads, update the site mirror.
• Conditionally free Offline Explorer, which allows you to download not only files or pages, but entire sites from the Internet via FTP, HTTP, HTTPS, RTSP, MMS, BitTorrent.
• Download Manager Free Download Manager. It integrates with all browsers, has built-in FTP, supports the BitTorrent protocol, can create torrent files, and intercept links from the clipboard.
• Teleport Pro with closed source for Windows. The program allows you to download entire sites.
• Free console non-interactive program for downloading files and sites from the Internet Wget. The program supports the protocols HTTPS, HTTP, FTP, and can also work through HTTP proxy server. Suitable for Linux.

Creating a backup on the hosting

You can set up a backup of the site on your hosting provider. To do this, you need to go to the admin panel, in the backup creation section. Each hosting has its own admin panel, and it's hard to say exactly where your section is located. If you can not figure it out, write to technical support.

Creating backup copies of plugins

If your site is hosted on a CMS platform, such as, for example, WordPress, you can save a copy of the site by installing the wp-db-backup plug-in (en.wordpress.org/plugins/wp-db-backup/) or similar to it. By properly configuring the plugin, you will receive a backup every day or every week, as you wish.

How to save a copy of the site to your computer

You can save the site to your computer using an FTP client. If you use the program FileZilla, then create a folder on your computer "Backup" (folder name can be anything). Connect to the server through the FTP-client and simply drag and drop the full backup of the site in the folder "Backup".

In addition, you can use the service Site2ZIP (site in the archive), the program for downloading WinHTTrack WebSite Copier. How can I see a saved copy of the site? To do this, open the folder in which the site was saved, and click on the index.html file.

Internet Archive

In San Farncisco in 1996, Brewster Cale founded the non-profit organization "Internet Archive". He collects copies of all web pages, audio and video recordings, graphic files and programs. Here, archives of collected material are stored for a very long time and there is free access to their databases for all comers.

If you are wondering how to open a saved copy of the site, go to archive.org/web/ and enter the address of the site or page in the corresponding field. At the end of 2012, the size of the Internet archive was 10 petabytes - it's 10,000 terabytes! And by mid-2016, it had accumulated 502 billion copies of web pages.

Caching a site by search engines

A saved copy of the Google site is nothing more than the cache of the site pages that was made by the search engine. Any user at any time can use for their needs a copy of the page. Keeping them on the servers of search engines takes a lot of resources, and for this purpose a lot of money is allocated, but this help pays for itself, since we still go to search engines. True, this method is suitable only for existing sites or for those that have been removed recently. If it happened long ago, the search engine erases the data.

Specialized search engine

In addition to the fact that you can manually search for cached pages in Google or Yandex, you can use the specialized cachedview.com search engine. He has an analog: cachedpages.com.

If you want to keep a copy of the site or its separate page, you can do it yourself and for free on the site archive.is. In addition, there is also a global search for versions that were ever saved by the user.

Creating a web archive in national libraries

Today, the national libraries have the task of creating archives of Internet documents that are part of the scientific, cultural and historical heritage of mankind. But this is very problematic.

The conducted researches revealed that the number of web documents on the Web grows exponentially, and on average the document lives from one to four months. As the unit of accounting for the archive of web documents, it is most convenient to use the website. The process of creating a foundation is to create a copy or "mirror" of the site. Since the information on it changes over time, the library needs to create mirrors of the same website with a certain periodicity.

So, in Sweden 60 000 sites, which is 20 times higher than the number of traditional printed publications. Copies of printed documents in the library of Sweden occupy 1.7 km of shelves per year. The web archive would take 25 km of shelves! Now their archive contains 138 million files with a total weight of 4.5 gigabytes.

The Internet is growing every day. There are many companies and sites that care about keeping copies of web pages in their archives. But do not rely only on them. Make timely backups, and you will not lose your site ever.