Is there really any reason to back up my DNN 3.XX site? Can it really crash or end up going corrupt? If so, are there any free backup utilites or modules that can be added to backup the whole site and everything within. Thanks for your help!

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Mike DeBaise President/CEO Trial by Fire Web Design, LLC. URL: www.TBFWD.com Email: President@TrialByFireDesigns.com

The fact that it is a DNN site is irrelevant - it's more like common sense (no offence!) - if you ever have valuable data you are backing up in the event of an accident (which is unpredictable, and if you knew it was going to happen it would not be called an accident and you could plan around it) - or if you ever need to retrieve historical data (happens occasionally - usually immediately after you have erased the backups).

You only really need to backup your DNN DB (your host should be able to do this with SQL Enterprise Mangler), and the Portals folder (although to make it easier to set up again a complete file back up is advisable - the Desktop module folders will have all the 3rd party modules in etc.

Here is a TRAGIC story of a wellknown site that has now been completely destroyed by a bad backup strategy (Note - this is NOT a DNN site, but the principle remains):
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/06/29/couchsurfing-deletes-itself-shuts-down/

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Entrepreneur

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Now that is an awful story.  Yes I went and checked my backups - these stories are obviously here to remind us to check them. 

Worse than that - the word - avoidable - eg.. possibly some tech error, not other failure assisted in the demise of the site magnifies it!

Why backup anything?  I look at it this way - if you had to start over again with nothing, and build from scratch, what would the impact on your business be? And I suppose only you can answer that.  If you shudder at the thought, then you need to check your backups.

Nina Meiers

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