Now we’re going to focus on protecting your website. Websites are nothing more than a collection of files. Some files contain instructions about how the site should look, some files contain instructions about what the site should do, some files contain information about what content the site should display, and some files are images that are displayed on the site.

Most sites are hosted on an external web hosting server. This is the server that is contacted and that “serves up” your web pages when someone visits your site. The files that comprise your website are stored on the server. In order to protect your site, it’s important that you have copies of all of these files.

If you’re technically savvy you can download the site files yourself. You’ll want all of the web files, and in some cases, you’ll also have database files that are a part of your site, and you’ll want them too. Make a copy of all your files on a CD or DVD for safe keeping. If your site content changes regularly, you should make new copies of your files regularly as well.

If you’re not the technical type, ask your webmaster, website developer or web hosting company to make a copy of your site files for you. There is usually only a small fee involved, and once you have a copy of your files you’ll have taken the second and final step in protecting your website investment.

At eSolutions, we provide web development, hosting, marketing services to businesses worldwide. We invite you to contact us for a free consultation to learn how we can help you succeed with your Internet presence.

Over the years, one of the most common ways we’ve seen companies run into trouble with their website is to allow the contact information for their domain name to become outdated. If your domain registrar doesn’t have a valid email address on file you could have some problems down the line.

The best case scenario is that your domain expires because you didn’t receive your renewal notices, and your website goes down temporarily until it is renewed. Depending on your registrar, your domain could already be considered to be in the “redemption period” by the time you realize it is down, which could cost you hundreds of dollars to recover it. The worst case scenario is that you don’t realize your site is down (maybe you don’t use it for email) and your domain is actually deleted. If that happens your domain could be registered by someone else and you would lose all the marketing time and money that went into promoting it.

There are a few simple things you can do to avoid any problems with your domain:

1. Update the email address that your registrar has on file any time you change your email address.
2. Set your domain to auto-renew using a credit card that your registrar will keep on file.
3. Make sure that you are listed as the registrant for the domain, not your webmaster or your hosting company.

You have a lot invested in your domain name and website, so take a few minutes to follow these simple steps to protect your investment!