You've created a great site, customized its design, and added valuable content. That's an investment worth protecting. Rest assured, most Joomla sites will run for years without any hiccups. However, it's a good idea to take some precautions to minimize the risk of your website getting broken into. A few simple measures can make it a lot harder for malicious hackers to get access to your site and mess up its contents. Backing up data regularly can get you out of trouble fast if you run into hardware disasters (such as crashing hard drives) or software trouble (such as installing extensions that somehow mess up your existing site). Fortunately, these problems are rare, but it's definitely worth the little extra time investment needed to minimize risks.

How can you protect your site and how do you get your site up and running again when something has gone wrong? This appendix contains some essential tips and best practices to keep your site in perfect health (and save yourself some headaches too).