Backing up a WordPress Site
Have you ever had issues with someone hacking your website? Do you have fears that someone might want to hack your blog or completely erase the content of your website?
You shouldn’t have to worry about it if you have backed up your website. However, one way to make sure your website is always backed up is by using a backup plug-in.
There are paid and free versions of backup plug-ins.
The paid versions of backup plug-ins are plenty for you to choose from depending on your budget and your website needs. Some of the most popular backup plug-ins are:
- VaultPress (now part of JetPack)
Created by developers that are also behind the famous Jetpack WordPress plug-in. It’s automatic and it doubles as a security plug-in for your website as it protects from viruses and malware. - BackupBuddy
If you have the intention to be all-out and serious with your website or if it seems like your business is growing and you want to invest in a high-quality plug-in for backup, BackupBuddy is one of the best options. Used by approximately half a million WordPress sites since 2010, there are yearly and lifetime subscriptions for this plug-in.
One of the free version plug-ins to secure your website is BackupWordPress.
To find this plug-in, search for the word “BackupWordPress” in the Plug-ins section. This plug-in has more than 200,000 active installations and has been reviewed 4.5 stars on the WordPress Plug-ins section.
Go to Tools and click Backups. On the page, you’ll see no backups are available. You need to schedule your backups.
To do this, go to Settings and you will have the option to back up your database only or files only, or to back up both database and files. What’s included in files are all of your website images and/or media files. If you want a full backup, I suggest backing up both your database and your files so you’ll never lose anything.
In case someday you lose it, you just need to download the backup file and start again.
Next, set up a schedule for your backup. You can choose the backup to be done daily, hourly, weekly, biweekly, or monthly. It is recommended that you set it according to how often you update your website.
If you’re posting new blog posts twice a week or making updates more than once a week, I wouldn’t recommend scheduling the backup only once a month and taking the risk to lose your files. If you post more, update more frequently.
There’s also an option to do the backup manually. You can take this step after you made a drastic change to your website so you can create a separate backup.
You can set the day and the time for when the backup process will start and also set the number of backups you want to store on the server where you’re hosting your website. For instance, if you’re hosting with BlueHost, it will be backed up in your BlueHost database.
For other options, there are other plug-ins or a premium version of BackUpWordPress that will automatically backup your website to cloud services like Dropbox or Google Drive. This might be a good idea if you want the backup to be easily accessible.
You can also have the plug-in to send you an email with a download link whenever you’re doing a backup. Just don’t forget to provide your email address in the Email notification field provided.
Alternatively, you can download your files from an FTP server, but I’m not going to go over the details right now because it’s more advanced. But it’s one way to access all your backup data files.
However, if you make a lot of changes and you just want to back up your website manually you can click the Run now button.
After you’ve run some backups or after it’s done multiple times, BackUpWordPress will show all of your backups down in the backup section and you can download them straight from there. It will be listed under the Actions column.