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Blog Security: Do You Really Need Expensive Software to Protect Your Blog?

How much are you willing to pay for your blog security?

I was reading a blog post recently that talked about all the things that can go wrong that would ruin my blog and all the effort and uncountable hours of work I put into it.

The post provided every reason possible to consider blog security to protect your blog. And as you’d expect, protecting your blog involves the purchase of blog security software and tools that cost money.

Over the years, I have heard and read about several discussions advocating the same, all coming from sophisticated and experienced bloggers. But how valid is the premise of the discussion?

I can’t comment on how things were years back since I am a relatively new blogger. However, often times I feel that such discussions are meant to instill more fear in us than really necessary. The fear of losing our blog and everything with it makes the back-up / blog security / protection argument even stronger and more compelling.

Everyone speaks from their own unique experiences, and often their passion and drive for the subject matter is a direct result of something they have gone through in the past. Sure, unforeseen and unfortunate events occur, but you have to wonder whether the writer could be the exception to the rule?

How many times have you heard someone completely lose a website or a blog and not able to recover it for a reasonable cost? Another way to look at it is that the writer is pushing the sale of a particular product or service because it pays affiliate commissions.

I don’t know about you, but first of all, even the dinkiest hosting service provider out there has “good” blog security and back-up standards in place. I am sure premium hosts have it even better.

Second, even if you have to pay for the back-up and restoration services, I doubt it will ever come close to what you would pay to purchase a software or subscription. Software becomes outdated, requiring future purchases, and subscriptions whack your credit card each and every month.

What I have seen out there is normally a service in the $50 per month range that promises to secure your blog and backup the information in order to restore it in the highly unlikely and very rare event that something catastrophic enough happens to wipe you out of cyberspace.

After my most recent read on this topic, I called GoDaddy immediately and spent 20 minutes talking to Heather, a very patient, helpful and overall wonderful lady who explained how GoDaddy’s security and back-up processes work. Although I use several host providers, this blog is hosted on GoDaddy’s servers.

Guess what I learned from my conversation with Heather? If something happens to your blog, GoDaddy can go as far back as 30 days and restore the most recent version. In the event you have databases, which blogs do, there is a one-time recovery charge in the unlikely and rare event you lose your information. I believe she said $250 per database.

Unless I am blatantly missing something, I simply don’t see a risk in leaving my blog as is. It’s simply not a big deal at all. My blog has one database, maybe two, max attached to it. Even if I were to lose everything, I could pay GoDaddy $500 ($250 per database) and have them restored immediately.

If I were to pay for the protection plan, I would be paying $50 per month, or $600 a year. Now I have been making money online since 2005 with several different websites hosted on several different host service providers. Knock on wood, but until today nothing has gone wrong.

Although I have only mentioned GoDaddy in this discussion, it is hard for me to believe that any other host provider would not have similar website or blog security and back-up measures in place.

I’ve run into many similar situations like this in the past. As a non-techie newbie, everything may appear urgent and absolutely necessary on the surface, until you research the subject a bit in detail. The key is to understand the premise of the discussion, and then do enough due diligence to make sense of the subject on hand.

If you are also a non techie and a relative newbie like me, I am sure you can relate to this post. Can you share a situation where you might have come across a discussion and started to panic because you thought something that you have a vested interest in is at risk, just to find out later that it is no bid deal?

Do you worry about blog security at all? Do you have your blog or website protected, secured and backed-up? Do you pay for it or do it yourself manually? What are your overall thoughts on this subject?

I am also expecting backlash from strong advocates of super securing everything (usually the more sophisticated and experienced bloggers). So here we go, let’s hear it? I welcome the opportunity to learn from you.

12 Comments

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12 Responses to “Blog Security: Do You Really Need Expensive Software to Protect Your Blog?”

Daniel says:
August 21, 2011 at 1:33 am
Nice post!
As a techie i do not know of any bigger webhoster that doesn’t do backups. So i see no point in having to pay someone to make backups. If you really want to, make a backup by hand once or twice a week. There is a wp plugin that backs up your database (can’t remember the name) or you can do that by hand too. Then open you ftp program and copy the files of your site to your computer.
Thats really not that much work, and if everything goes wrong, you still would have a few-days old backup on your computer to restore.
Reply
- Sunil says:
  August 21, 2011 at 6:00 am
  Welcome to my blog Daniel. You are correct – I have that plugin installed and it sends me weekly emails of my backup files, which I store on my desktop and replace each time I get a new one. The email is also somewhere in my Gmail “trash” folder which I can search for later – lol
  Reply
  - Daniel says:
    August 21, 2011 at 6:17 am
    Does it only send the database files or the files too? (i assume only database)
    Reply
    - Sunil says:
      August 21, 2011 at 7:19 am
      Just the DB – Do you have a better solution?
      Reply
      - Daniel says:
        August 21, 2011 at 8:14 am
        Not really. Sending all files via email isn’t that good as the rmail would be HUGE. Also you would not need everything probably only your theme files, images, plugins. But because of you i will dive deeper into that within the next days and pulish an article on that. 🙂
        Reply
Geoff says:
August 21, 2011 at 4:59 pm
Sunil, I use the weekly backup plugin too. I had thought it was both database and blog posts, but after reading these comments, I’d better check to be certain…..but definitely doesn’t seem to be a need to waste an extra 50 bucks per month.
I actually had to do a full backup restore a couple weeks ago when I accidentally overwrote one of the files on my new blog as I was setting it up (BEFORE i had a chance to turn on backups!). I use Bluehost and when I called them, they said there was a similar fee to do the restore (like godaddy). But oddly enough, I called back 20 minutes later and spoke to another person who did the entire restore process for me for free (they take a snapshot each morning of everything). Needless to say I was thrilled…..and I guess not everyone at Bluehost knows whether they are supposed to charge for that sort of thing.
Reply
- Sunil says:
  August 21, 2011 at 6:14 pm
  Geoff – as it is with most customer service joints, sometimes you just need to call back until you find a nice one. Sometimes you just have to sweet talk your way into it 😉
  Reply
Jason Maher says:
August 21, 2011 at 8:11 pm
It is important to have a good security system for the blog so that it is safe and secure and it has no danger from Hackers. I have a friend who has safe server consequences because his security system was weak and he didn’t spend for such things. This is a superb post and it will make a lot of people aware of the importance of having a security system.
Reply
- Daniel says:
  August 22, 2011 at 6:29 am
  i really don’t know, but i don’t think that was what the post wanted to say…
  also 99% of those “we secure your site” are worthless.
  Reply
  - Sunil says:
    August 22, 2011 at 6:42 pm
    Curious Daniel – why do you say they are worthless? Or do you mean they are an unnecessary cost and therefore can be avoided without much down side?
    Reply
    - Daniel says:
      August 22, 2011 at 7:02 pm
      Exactly. 🙂
      Reply
- Sunil says:
  August 22, 2011 at 6:42 pm
  I am actually advocating not paying unnecessarily for security systems if one’s host/server provider provides regular back ups
  Reply