♫ Say you’ll never leave me, never leave me alone.
Say you’ll never leave me, never leave me alone…♫

Words and music by Tony Banks.

One of the lessons we have all learned when using computers – usually the hard way – is to back up your work. There are few sensations to match that sinking feeling when you realize that your document/file/hard drive has been deleted, crashed or simply disappeared – leaving you frantically trying to recover your data.

Yet many of us have websites and blogs that are hosted by third parties – and we are blissfully unaware of whether or not these third party hosts have dutifully backed up our work in the event of some disaster. Enter HTTrack Website Copier. This free application (distributed pursuant to the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation) allows you to make a backup of your website or blog by downloading to a local directory all the directories, HTML, images and other files found in your blog or web site using your original link-structure. Once downloaded, you can ‘browse’ your web site or blog as if you were online. It is quick, easy to configure and easy to use.

This is a great application and a fine example of the other free software to be found under the GNU free licence. And best of all, by backing up your web site or blog, you can be assured that your data will never leave you alone…

(Hat tip to Dominic Jaar for putting me onto HTTrack Website Copier!)