Syncplicity - Simple Online Backup For Your Blog

Posted by Sharon Hurley Hall on April 16th, 2009

This post has been submitted by Sharon Hurley Hall from Get Paid To Write Online.com.

I’m a bit paranoid about backup. As you will know from my post on How To Save Your Blog From Extinction, I have learned the hard way about backing up my content. Since writing that post, I have found a new backup tool to supplement Mozy, which I am still using. That tool is Syncplicity - and never was an online backup tool more aptly named. It provides automatic, simple backup and you never have to think about it again. I’ve been using it for more than a year now and I am very happy. Here’s how it works.

Getting Started

Once you have signed up for an account all you have to do is install the Syncplicity application. This is a lightweight app and when it’s backing up you won’t notice any lag. Next, decide which folders Syncplicity should backup. It makes a couple of default suggestions which will suit most people, though I prefer to pick my own folders to backup. The first backup takes a while, then Syncplicity automatically adds new and changed files. Occasionally, with a large file, this might prevent it from being accessible by another program, but it’s rare and the security of knowing it’s backed up makes it worth it for me.

Getting Access

You can link two computers to your free account or pay to add more computers and more storage. Once your files are backed up you can access them from anywhere and changed files are automatically resynced with the source the next time you are online. Syncplicity uses a number of online tools (such as Zoho) to allow file editing. You can also sync your documents with your Google Docs account.

You can also use Syncplicity to share folders with friends and family - a great boon if you want to upload your most recent holiday snaps, and the people you share with don’t need a Syncplicity account to view the files. Syncplicity can also help you to create Facebook albums from your photos. From your desktop you can also create a shareable link to any file which you can send to the people you want to have it. However you choose to share data, no one can overwrite your shared files.

The Verdict

I am blissfully happy with Syncplicity. The free account has 2GB of storage and as an early user, I qualified for an additional 3GB. You can also get additional storage by referring friends to the service, something I plan to do so I can upload more photos to Syncplicity. I now have an online backup of every blog post I write - and a lot of other content too.

Sharon Hurley Hall
Get Paid To Write Online.com

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2 Responses to “Syncplicity - Simple Online Backup For Your Blog”

Professional Keyword Research Services Says:
April 25th, 2009 at 11:51 am
This is something that I should be looking into. I’ve lost an entire blog that I didn’t have backed up. Everyone should have all of their websites completely backed to prevent massive headaches.
Sharon Says:
April 26th, 2009 at 6:20 am
That happened to me once, and it was a pain to restore it all. Try looking in Google’s cache to find your old posts and photos. That will also give you the dates so you can rebuild your blog.