PPI can be worthwhile if you can afford the payments and you have a low balance. However, if you are self-employed and need to save money, then PPI is something you can usually do without.

If you have a credit card, then you will have been offered payment protection insurance to go with it. You may or may not have taken the insurance, or it may have been included in your charges without you knowing. Many people have payment protection, but are unsure of its costs and benefits. Payment protection can be useful, but it is also expensive and only worthwhile if you really need it. Here are some hints and tips to help you decide if payment protection is worth the money you pay for it: What is Payment Protection Insurance? Payment Protection Insurance, or PPI, is a type of insurance policy for credit cards. The policy covers your payments should you have an accident or illness or lose your jobs. The idea is that if you cannot pay your bill through no fault of your own, then the insurance will cover your payments. However, there are a number of pitfalls with such insurance, apart from the fact that it is usually quite expensive. Limited pay out period One problem with PPI is that it only pays out for a certain amount of time. If you have a serious illness and cannot pay for months or years, then this insurance cannot help you. The usual maximum payment period is a year. However, the way the debt is paid off by the insurance should mean you are debt free after this period. Hidden costs One of the main problems with PPI is its cost. PPI usually costs 70 or 80p per £100 outstanding balance. This means the cost is very high when you owe a lot of money, but you often don’t realise this because the large numbers involved hide the charges. Also, if you pay by Direct Debit each month, by the time you have tried to claim the bill might have already been paid by the debit. Rarely pays out Another issue with PPI is that the amount you area actually covered for is very small. You often pay for things that are of no relevance to you. For example, if you are self-employed you cannot claim for most of the unemployment cover, but you still pay for it. If you are going to get PPI, then check to make sure that you have the cover you really want and that the policy is useful for you. Other options Due to the problems with PPI, it pays to look at the alternatives. Obviously, one alternative is to not have PPI at all. It costs you money, especially if you have a large balance, and gives you few benefits. However, the best alternative to PPI from credit card companies is to get a policy from an independent company. These PPI policies are usually a flat rate of only a few pounds, and will give you cover in case you need it for much less money. PPI can be worthwhile if you can afford the payments and you have a low balance. However, if you are self-employed and need to save money, then PPI is something you can usually do without.

More and more webmasters nowadays do not value the importance of a complete website backup. Chances are, they are doomed..

More and more webmasters nowadays do not value the importance of a complete website backup (files and databases). They have left this to chance and good luck which poses a great risk to their online presence.

Can you relate to this? Then read this important article which might save you an arm and a leg later.

Web site backup is the most ignored task of the webmasters simply because it poses no immediate threat to them until something worse happen to their hosting server. Many times, this task is set aside, delayed and even regarded as nuisance to the busy website owner.

They just don’t realize what is at stake here.

So before your website is wiped out of the internet by unexpected accidents like server breakdowns, harddisk failures, hacking and DDOS attacks among other bad things, let me share with you the 10 Backup E-S-S-E-N-T-I-A-L-S you should not live without online.

EXPECT – Know that your webhosting company (even the biggest and the most boastful out there) may encounter problems and that your diligence to backup will pay off later on. Online computing has never been so unpredictable that the worse of times will happen when you least expect it. With the proper mindset, you are insuring the continuity of your online endeavor in any eventualities. In short, be ready.

SCHEDULE – Your backup process should not compete with your busy schedules. Create your own backup schedule at the most convenient time for you in the week. If you’re like me, I do this during lunch and dinner times. Sometimes, I have to leave my PC overnight working on the backups. If you can make it not to conflict with your busy schedules, you will be able to keep up with the demands of this job. In short, don’t complicate.

STICK with it – Just do it. Patience is key to your backup tasks. Once you have a schedule, stick with it. You must do this diligently every time it should happen. This is a tough challenge especially to busy people working online. But the sooner you discipline yourself and make backing up your files a habit, the more you will benefit from a worry-free online environment. In short, get a good habit.

EVALUATE – After a while, test your backup files. A good backup can be tested by simply restoring it on another system. Evaluating your backup results from time to time is good way to know that you are keeping what you should keep – a good and working backup. In short, be sure.

NO Complacency – After some time, your backup schedule may slip away and you will tend to forget or intentionally miss it. Don’t succumb to this temptation. Man has never been so busy in his lifetime like it is today in this era of the high tech trends, new developments and discoveries. In short, don’t be lazy to backup.

TRASH – Know which files to keep and not to keep. You need to do this to keep your backup process as short and as efficient as possible. It also saves you valuable resources like hard disk space and backup mediums. Backup only what you need. Keep out the trash and dump it. In short, don’t sweat with the trash.

INTUITION – Have faith in your backup results. Believe that what you are doing is for your own good later on. Like vitamins that keep your body healthy, backups keeps your mind away from stress and worries. A good working backup will make you smile even on the worst of times because you are insured by your patience. In short, believe in good results.

AUTOMATE – Look for alternatives to traditional backup process that can make your life simpler. There are several technologies and softwares you can use now to generate the fastest and safest backup files you will need to restore in case of emergency without you lifting a finger. Automation is king in this lazy man’s world. In short, be efficient.

LIBERATE – Free yourself from worries and anxiety of the unexpected. A death sentence that can be prevented will not kill you. So think about what you can do more (like sleeping more at night) than to think about what harm may come. With your own backup systems established, you can retire at night calmly knowing the next day, if you don’t see your websites as you should, you know you can publish it back within the day even if your webhost cannot recover it for you. In short, relax and enjoy life to the max.

SECURITY – Nothing beats the feeling of being secured. This is the reason why the insurance businesses have flourished over the years. But more importantly, your commitment to backup your files will not only save you from stress, humiliation, frustration, anger and guilt, but also lift your spirit and confidence because you know at the end of the day, your self reliance is well worth it.

And that, my friend, is a great and wonderful feeling.

Many webmasters don’t really know how to deal and prevent website disasters until such time that they’ve lost everything…

If you answered YES to that question, you’re dead wrong my friend. Let me prove it to you by giving you real true-to-life examples.

Recently, I asked this question to one lady webmaster named Dorothy and she said quite simply,

“Well, why should I do that? My webhost said that they guarantee 99.9% of the time, my website will be OK. Besides, I don’t know how to do it if that’s technical stuff. So why should I care?”

That is the mindset of many people like her who really believed that the 99+% uptime guarantees found on the promises page of their webhosts is already their website insurance.

First of, what’s a “Disaster and Recovery Program”?

It’s all about a business owner’s plan of actions, systems and procedures that ensures business continuity when disruptions and disasters arise in the normal course of business.

Every major corporations and businesses worldwide have this on their yearly agenda as part of their risk management assessment. It’s also known as the “Business Continuity Program” in the corporate world.

I know your online business and your websites are important to you. So why then should it not apply to your online business as well?

You know that many times, disaster strikes us when we least expect it. Sometimes it even happens when you have a major product launch or a full-blown advertising campaign when, all of a sudden, your websites went down and boom, all your efforts and investments went down the drain as well.

If hackers happen to pick your site for fun and notoriety, managed to break in to deface it or release worms, Trojan horses, DDOS attack bots and the likes that damage your websites as a result, what will you do after?

What about fires in the datacenter where your server is located or maybe a hard disk failure on your web hosting server? There are even cases of errors in technical configurations, substandard server hardwares, overcrowded hosting servers, technical incompetence of support staff and other problems your host wouldn’t tell you about.

These disasters have ruined too many online businesses in the past. And my websites are not spared as well. Believe me when I tell you that it happened to my websites many times even on my own dedicated server! It only shows that disasters do happen and even your webhost sometimes cannot do anything about it.

Website hacking and defacing, viruses and worms, server crashes, server hardware failures, datacenter fires, network failures, electrical faults, technical support errors, long recurring service downtimes and other website disasters can immediately put you out of business. And that’s just one of the effects. Not to mention loss of face, loss of opportunities and loss of time.

Why?

Because downtime is just not acceptable these days. Your customers and visitors can’t wait all the time for you to be back online. If they can’t find you, they can’t buy from or trade with you and going to the competition is easy as a click of a mouse. Your advertising and promotional campaigns are put to waste because of your dead websites. Lots of money are lost in recovery and restoration as well as in lost opportunities that you will surely miss out.

That’s why we all need to make the planning for disaster and recovery a high priority item in our online business especially if you are seriously making a lot of money from it.

By the way, I’m not scaring you at all. But think about it for a moment. Imagine a situation wherein you and your websites are in total chaos, you don’t know what to do because you don’t have a website backup, you don’t have a restoration plan and you don’t really know who to run to or talk to about it.

You see, each webmaster should have a comprehensive plan of action. Your disaster and recovery program should not only target your webpages (html, images, photos, audios, zips and other files). You should know that there are other website components that you need to take care of too.

For example, many websites nowadays have MYSQL databases installed to store and manage their customers, sales, products, files and visitors data among other things. MYSQL is free to use so many people naturally are using it for their website scripts. There is a good chance that you are using or have used it too, right?

So when disaster strikes, not only are your webpages at risk, your precious MYSQL databases are also at risk. Most of the time, webmasters have local backups of the webpages, files and scripts on their hard drive which can be easily restored. But MYSQL databases need a special backup procedure for you to extract it straight from your website control panel. You can’t easily create it and upload it like your html, pdfs and zip files. Your web hosting server creates and grows these databases for you real time. So if you’re not technically inclined to know this as a webmaster, you might disregard it and face the risk of loss in the future. Yet losing your business data is like losing your business continuity. Once it’s lost, you’ll find it hard to recover.

Another website component is your website scripts. They need a disaster and recovery plan too. Say for example you purchased a PHP script that has an auto-install auto-update feature from the seller. Most often than not, you have no copy of this script on your local harddrive (since the seller might have installed it for you for free) much more the version updates that are automatically applied to your website each time the seller releases a new one.

If you fail to backup your whole PHP script configuration, then it will be very hard for you to restore this script to its last state. Imagine getting back to version 1 or older version of your scripts. You’ll end up paying the seller or a top programmer lots of money to restore this for you if you’re even lucky enough to have the script from the seller again for free. If not, you have to pay for it again.

Crazy eh?

What a waste of money just because you don’t have a disaster and recovery plan. Not only that. You will lose face, customers or visitors, momentum, opportunities and most of all, time to recover and restore everything to its last working condition.

You sure wouldn’t want to go back to where you started, would you?

So here are five (5) simple steps you can easily do to setup your own Disaster and Recovery Program for your online businesses:

1. First, REALIZE that your websites and all the other components are always at RISK. If you still believe your webhost that nothing can happen to your website no matter what, you won’t be able to know until you’ve lost everything. I know this and I speak by experience. If you can sleep at night well knowing that as a webmaster, you’re in control, then it really pays to do it yourself. If you’re still not convinced, answer this question: “Would you really put on some stranger’s hands the fate of your online business?” Remember that, most of the time, you’ve never even met or talk to your webhost.

2. Second, BACKUP ALL your website files, scripts and databases on your local hard drive, another remote server or another offsite media. This means you’ll download, store and update these files from time to time. You have to do this patiently on schedule (better once a week or best daily if you have high traffic database-driven websites). You will use these backup files to restore your website to its latest state when disaster strikes. Usually, web hosting control panels like Cpanel, Plesk, Ensim and Webmin have a backup and restore facility page where you can do this. Please check your control panel manual for details.

3. Third, LEARN how TO recover and RESTORE your websites to its latest state. Since your online business is important, you must be able to quickly recover from any disaster. A quick restoration plan should be in place and rehearsed during the “good times” so that when “bad times” come, you’re well prepared for it. Remember, if you know how to build your websites, you must also know how to rebuild it too. This is needed not only during disasters but also if you’re transferring to another web host or web server.

4. Fourth, COLLABORATE, if you’re not a programmer or technically knowledgeable about websites, scripts and MYSQL databases, with someone who has that knowledge. When disaster strikes, you should be able to quickly pull someone who can do the technical stuff for you if you don’t know how. My suggestion is to get someone from Elance.com or Scriptlance.com. Since these sites are working on a project bidding system, you’ll get better service at lesser price. There are risks involved here also but that’s another matter. What’s important is for you to know the places where to get help when you need it.

5. And lastly, STICK WITH YOUR PLAN and do it DILIGENTLY. You can never tell when problems will occur so you have to be ready all the time. And this can only be achieved by being serious to the above four (4) steps.

Remember, this disaster and recovery plan is your own insurance for your online business. You don’t have to pay someone to do it for you. You can do this if you’ll just realize that your online business is always at risk and it’s important that it continue so that you will benefit from it in the long term.

As you become triumphant over any online disasters you will be facing, you will know how good it is to be in total control.

And that, my friend, is a great feeling.