For many of us, our websites are our lifeblood. They are how we make our living, and how we support our families. They are our businesses and our passions.  The interesting thing about how important our websites are to us is that precious few of us actually take regular backups of our data.  Why is this?  No one knows, really.  Likely it’s that each of us figures it’ll always be someone else who loses their data in some catastrophic event.

For anyone who’s familiar with Apple’s Time Machine functionality, our CodeGuard is very similar except it’s for your hosting server rather than your home computer.  When you sign up with CodeGuard, you provide it the necessary credentials in order to access your data and take a complete backup.  After that point, it regularly monitors your server for any changes.  Any time CodeGuard detects a change (files being added, removed, or modified), it then takes an incremental backup and sends you an email to inform you of the fact.

It’s the next feature that really sets CodeGuard apart: it allows you to restore back to any prior version of your website.  All backups are stored in the cloud and you have multiple options for retrieving that data.  You can, at any time, download a full .zip of your backup, choose an automatic full restore, or simply restore a single file or folder that you may have accidentally nuked.  Basically, you have total control over your files with full accessibility at all times.  CodeGuard protects your data from catastrophic potentialities, and it can certainly protect you from yourself in some instances.

To know what plan is best for you, prices, etc. Please contact us.

Connect Site

First, connect your site by giving CodeGuard your ftp/sftp/MySQL information. It's that easy.

The first step in activating CodeGuard is to connect your website or database with our servers. There are several options available, and the right one depends on your level of sophistication, goals, and server configuration. At a high level, you really have two choices: (1) FTP/SFTP or (2) MySQL.

If you want to configure FTP/SFTP and MySQL backups, you have two options: use our cPanel or Plesk plugins, which will create an FTP user and password for you automatically, or enter the credentials yourself, manually.

Pros and Cons

FTP	SFTP	MYSQL
Supported by almost all hosting providers Access to all files, even those outside of your website content (logs, mail, user created folders) Ability to select which folders should and should not be backed up	Secure Transfer Access to all files, even those outside of your website content (logs, mail, user created folders) Ability to select which folders should and should not be backed up	Can connect directly to the database or use an SSH tunnel to connect Backs up all content accessible by database user
Not secure Have to set up database manually	Not supported by all hosting providers Have to set up database manually	You may have to whitelist CodeGuard's IP addresses for us to connect

 

 

To know what plan is best for you, prices, etc. Please contact us.

 

 

Initial Backup

Now we take an initial backup of your site. During the process, you’ll be able to view real-time updates on its progress.

The initial website or database backup is a complete data retrieval of all files that CodeGuard has access to. Depending on the number of files and total size, the initial backup can take up to 72 hours. After this first backup, future backups are differential, both in the files that are transferred and the files that are stored on your behalf. CodeGuard relies upon a queueing system and our backup process is not unlike FedEx package pickup and delivery. Our process is so similar, in fact, that we modeled our user experience after their process.

The four main steps of the initial backup are (i) process initiation (ii) file pick up (iii) file transit, and (iv) final delivery. Process initiation contains verifying the credentials and transmitting them to CodeGuard. File pick up begins with an analysis of the file structure and creation of a git repository within Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). The transit process begins after the file structure has been analyzed and the list of the files to be transmitted is finalized.

Files are then transferred to EC2. After all files are transferred to EC2, they are committed to the git repository on EC2, but do not remain there for long. As soon as the git commit is finished, the files are compressed and sent to Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), where they are encrypted using industry-leading AES 256 bit techniques. The last step of process is the deletion of the files from their temporary storage on EC2.

To know what plan is best for you, prices, etc. Please contact us.

Detailed Walkthrough

Static Content (FTP/SFTP)

We capture all file content and the process can take up to two days depending on the size of your site, number of files on your site, and the wait in the queue. All subsequent backups will not take as long or be as resource intensive.

1. Test the connection to the site using the same protocol (FTP, SFTP) that backup will use
2. Create a Git repository on the local server instance (i.e. EC2)
3. Build a list of files for the site
4. Add all of those files to the download queue
5. Download each file to the Git repository (on the local machine)
6. Commit all the downloaded files to the Git repository
7. Create a tarred and gzipped archive of the Git repository
8. Upload the archive to Amazon S3 which simultaneously encrypts the archive and all of its content
9. Build the file mix
10. Record the statistics from the backup

To know what plan is best for you, prices, etc. Please contact us.

Dynamic Content Overview (FTP/SFTP)

The database backups are stored as flat text files and the content of the text files is a list of executable SQL statements which, when run, will recreate the database in it’s entirety. The tables are stored this way so that when a user initiates a restore, no transformation of the data is needed. It can be run as-is to restore the database.

We connect and export the entire contents of the database using mysqldump. This provides us with the database schema (the list of all of the database tables and the columns they contain). The content of the database tables is then transformed into a format that allows us to use version control (Git) to track the changes made to your data. The specific flow of the process is as follows. The process is sequential and a failure at any step will stop the process:

To know what plan is best for you, prices, etc. Please contact us.

Monitoring Overview

Now we monitor your site daily for changes, and send a change alert email to you if there are any.

CodeGuard notifies you anytime anything changes within the source code of your website. Additions, modifications, and deletions between each version of your website can be viewed in your dashboard. Email notifications are also sent to inform users of what has changed. This is accomplished through two main vehicles: the front-end comparison analysis engine, and version control systems on the back-end.

To reduce the loads on our users’ servers, CodeGuard only transmits the files that have changed, as opposed to complete backups each time. The way CodeGuard determines which files have changed is with our comparison analysis engine. This engine lists and then compares the files with the previous backup. If any changes are found, only the changed files are transmitted.

The changed files are received in CodeGuard’s servers, and then placed in git, creating a new backup for the website. Since database files can be reduced to small sizes, no up-front comparison is performed on the database. CodeGuard simply compresses the databases and sends for analysis by the back-end version control system. Database additions can be seen by logging into the dashboard, and are located below the site content backup charts.

To know what plan is best for you, prices, etc. Please contact us.

Detailed Walkthrough

Static Content (FTP/SFTP)

CodeGuard uses SFTP/FTP to list all of the files and folders in your site, just like you would with an FTP client. Any folders, and the files within them, that were unselected during the initial backup are not checked. The duration of this process varies based on the number of files in your site and their sizes.

• Once the full list of files has been created, CodeGuard compares the list of files to the list received during the previous backup. Any files that have changed are marked to be downloaded
• Changed files are based on a number of factors:
  • File size
  • Last modification time
  • User or group ownership
  • File permissions

Dynamic Content (FTP/SFTP)

There isn’t a ‘Monitoring’ process for MySQL or the WP DB. We get all of the content all the time because there is no generic way to detect the changes since the last backup.

• Additions to the database can be viewed within the user dashboard. At the current time, users are not notified via email when additions are made to the database

To know what plan is best for you, prices, etc. Please contact us.

Backup Again

After monitoring we continuously backup your site again and again if we detect changes.