What would happen if your web host had a server crash and didn't have a working backup of your websites? Would you be able to rebuild them all quickly or would you be left with no sites and no easy way to get them back?

Most web hosts do backups on a regular basis, but a lot of them state in their terms of service that they're not responsible for data loss due to insufficient backups. In other words, if you lose everything it's not their problem.

Someone on a forum that I belong to had this happen just the other day. She lost all her sites when the VPS crashed. The host told her that their backup was "corrupted" and they couldn't restore any of her sites for her.

It was a bit of a wake up call for me. I have backups of all my static sites on my computer, and by extension in my main backup system, but I haven't done any backups of my Wordpress databases for a while. I shudder to think of losing them all if there were ever a problem.

Make sure you've got a backup plan in place for your websites, and don't always rely on your host even if they tell you they do regular backups. The time it takes to back things up pales in comparison to the time it takes to rebuild all your sites from square one.