A WordPress backup is an insurance policy for your website. Boring to think about when everything is going well, but invaluable when something goes wrong. With WordPress powering around 40% of the internet today, you can be sure that something always goes wrong.
Backing up your WordPress website might also seem like an important, albeit necessary, task, especially if you have an eCommerce store or a high-traffic website. It does not have to be like that. In this article, we’ll show you how to backup a WordPress site in literal minutes and make sure it stays secure permanently.
TL;DR Back up your WordPress site in minutes with BlogVault. Install the plugin on your website, let it sync, and you’re done. BlogVault is the ultimate solution for WordPress websites and works seamlessly with all web hosts. Get scheduled, automated backups for your critical site data and ensure your website never experiences downtime again.
What are WordPress backups?
A WordPress backup is a complete copy of your website that can be restored if something goes wrong with your website. There are many ways to backup your WordPress site: using your web host, using a dedicated WordPress backup plugin, or even trying to do it manually.
However, not all backups are created equal. You need to have WordPress backups for your peace of mind so you are not afraid of losing data from your website. This is especially critical for e-commerce websites with customer and order data, or with law firm websites, for example. A server crash, malware or even a simple human error can wipe out months of work and cause significant losses. Backups protect against those scenarios.
In this article, we’ll talk about how to backup a WordPress site and the best way to do it.
What to backup on your WordPress site
The short answer to this question is everything.
Partial backups of any kind aren’t useful for restores, so we don’t recommend backing up just this or that, based on advice you’ll find elsewhere. You can partially restore a website, say a file or a plugin, but it is always better to have a full WordPress backup.
When we say everything, it’s sometimes hard to understand exactly what we mean. So here is a brief introduction to the structure of your WordPress website.
There are 2 main components of your WordPress website: the files and the database.
- The files contain WordPress core files, plugin files, theme files, configuration and settings files, and upload files.
- The database contains everything else, such as user information, posts, pages, links, comments, and other types of user-generated content. This data is stored in the form of tables like wp_posts and wp_comments, for example.
Together, they make up your WordPress website.
You will see many ways to backup only WordPress files or only WordPress database, as we mentioned before. We advise against doing this, because it becomes much more difficult to restore a website from a partial backup. Always take full WordPress backups and select the parts you want to restore afterwards.
How to Backup a WordPress Site (3 Methods)
There are 3 main options you have to backup WordPress site. We have arranged this in order of effectiveness.
- Use a WordPress Backup Plugin
- Back up your site with your web server
- Back up your manual for your site
A. How to Backup WordPress Site With a Plugin
The easiest and most reliable way to backup a WordPress site is to use a plugin. Backup plugins save you the trouble of going into cPanel or Plesk and using those tools to download copies of your website. You can schedule automatic backups and use 1-click restores, saving considerable time and effort.
BlogVault is the best-in-class backup plugin for WordPress. Setting up BlogVault on your website is easy:
1. Create a BlogVault account and click Add New Site
2. Enter the URL of your website
3. Choose Automatic Installation and enter your wp-admin credentials
And that’s it! The site starts to sync, which means that WordPress is being backed up. The synchronization process will happen in the background and you can continue working on your website as you normally would.
Alternatively, you can install BlogVault directly on your WordPress website, enter your email address in the settings, and your BlogVault dashboard will be created automatically. Again, the site sync will start automatically and you can get on with your day.
Why We Recommend BlogVault Backups
Backups are a vital but tedious maintenance activity, and it’s the kind of task that can be easily automated. You should only think about backups when you need to restore your site or a part of it, and it should be there by default.That is truly hands-free maintenance for your website.
We recommend BlogVault for many reasons. Here are some of the best:
- Scheduled and automated backups: Set a time and forget about it until you need to restore.
- Unlimited storage: Your site can be huge, but you still don’t pay for storage with BlogVault. Storage costs on local drives and cloud services can add up quickly for large sites.
- Offsite Backups: All of your site’s backups are stored off your website’s server, so if something goes wrong with your web host or website server, your site can be instantly restored to a different server from a BlogVault backup.
- 100% restore success: If you’ve tried manual backups, you know that restores can be unpredictable. BlogVault backups restore perfectly every time.
- External Panel: If your website crashes and you can’t access wp-admin, you can restore your website from the BlogVault control panel with one click.
- Integrated Staging: Test all your updates on a test site before making any changes to your live site. Once testing is complete, quickly merge changes without having to repeat the process.
- Up to 365 days of backups: Store up to a year of backups of your website, so you can easily restore any part of your site from any point in the last anus. . This is in contrast to most plugins and indeed web servers, which will store up to 30 backups maximum.
- Secure Backups: All BlogVault backups are encrypted.
There are several other reasons why backups BlogVault security are the best choice for WordPress websites among all other backup plugins that are available.
B. How To Backup Your WordPress Site With Your Web Host
Most web hosts offer backup as part of their services, sometimes as an add-on or included in their hosting plans. . Some hosts will back up their servers independently, as a fail-safe measure.
To backup your WordPress site with your web host, you first need to find out if backups are included in your plan or not. Read the terms of your agreement or contact your support. Once you’ve established this, you can set up web host backups in a few steps:
Note: We’ve used WPEngine screenshots for this tutorial. The steps may vary depending on your web host.
1. Log in to your hosting dashboard and navigate to the site you want to back up.
2. Look for a backup option. This will be in a menu or in the navigation pane.
3. Follow the instructions on the screen to complete the WordPress backup.
With some web hosts, you can set up automatic scheduled backups, how many backups you want to store, and customize which parts of the website you want to back up. We have comprehensive backup and restore guides for the major web hosts: GoDaddy, Siteground, WPEngine, and Bluehost.
Why web server backups shouldn’t be your only backups. security
Web hosting backups are a good option for first-time users, but they shouldn’t be the only backups of your website. There are several times when people have lost their websites completely, despite getting backups from the web server.
Common reasons why web hosting backups are unreliable:
- Backups are stored on the same server as your site: Server problems can cause your site and its backup, leaving you nowhere. Also, storing multiple copies of your website on your server means that backups are eating up your website’s resources. In these cases, users have to choose between extending their website or maintaining backup copies. This is not a choice that anyone should make.
him. When something goes wrong, you want to be able to restore your site quickly.
remove it completely. Bluehost is particularly fast at doing this. Unfortunately, they will also delete your backups and you will be left with nothing to rebuild or recover your website with.
These are just a few of the reasons why you should consider going for standalone backups for your website. Web hosts take many precautions to protect their systems, but they are by no means invulnerable.
In August 2021, Web Host Canada experienced a major security breach, where hackers deleted much of the data on their servers. Through their live updates on the situation, it was learned that Web Host Canada was not sure if they could recover the data. Fortunately, however, after several sleepless nights, they were able to restore most of their client sites.
A few months later, GoDaddy had a major security breach, compromising the database and SFTP credentials of approximately 1.2 million users. The data was not lost at that time, but the hackers had access to the databases and backends of the websites for more than 2 months. Anything could have happened.
C. How to Backup WordPress Site Manually
Manual backups are the least effective and most tedious to perform. If someone has to rely on a manual backup process, they are likely to start taking shortcuts and skip backups, regardless of their dedication. Manual backups are time consuming, and honestly, that time is better spent doing something more productive.
That said, it’s helpful to know exactly how to perform a manual backup; It’s a bit like knowing how to drive a stick, when all other cars are automatic.
The first thing to understand about manual backups is that you’ll have to perform two partial backups to get one. full WordPress backup. . That means you should back up the files and the database separately and keep the two backups together each time.
- File Backups
- cPanel: Most web hosts offer cPanel, a popular backup software. control panel, to manage your website. . However, your web server may use a different one, such as Plesk or Webmin. There will be a tool like File Manager in cPanel or Plesk, which will allow you to view your website files.
- FTP: If your host doesn’t provide a control panel, then you can use FTP to download a copy of the files from your website. However, it takes a little longer to do so and you will need an FTP client like FileZilla or Cyberduck to connect to your site.
- Database backups data : If you have access to cPanel, click on phpMyAdmin to access your database. You will need your database login credentials, which are available in your wp-config file or your hosting account.
We’ve put together a comprehensive guide on how to perform manual backups, describing each step in detail.
Why we strongly recommend against relying on backup copies manual safety
There are situations where manual restores are your only option, however, those are mostly hail situations. If the steps above weren’t an indication enough, manual backups take a long time and are tedious to start.
However, the worst part about cPanel backups is not the time or effort they require. There are other reasons why we discourage manual backups:
- Unreliable restores: The whole point of a WordPress backup is so you can restore your website if it fails or breaks. But cPanel isn’t designed to handle large sites, so after a certain size, the backup will almost always fail. This is especially the case with large databases.
- Restores mean downtime: To restore a website, you must delete the files and the database, and then copy the restored files and database. instead This is an understandably stressful process, because your website will be down the entire time the restore is taking place.
- There is no way to test a WordPress backup before restore: Continuing on from the previous point, there is absolutely no way to tell if the backup you have obtained is complete and downloaded correctly. during the backup process. So when you go into restore, you might find that the folders are either empty or damaged, and that’s your backup and website gone in a puff of smoke.
These scenarios may sound like a nightmare, because they are, but they are real customer experiences before they decided to use BlogVault.
Why WordPress Backups Are Important
There are a number of things that can go wrong with a WordPress website. So, to protect your website if it crashes or if content is inadvertently deleted, you should have a recent WordPress backup stored on an external server; that is, in a different location from your web hosting server.
Recent backups can save your website, tons of work and all the resources you have invested in your website in the following situations :
Web Host or Server Problems
Your web host stores your website on a server, which is essentially a computer. And just like any other computer, servers can also crash for various reasons. Software problems can cause servers to become irrecoverably corrupted. Grid connection failures can occur due to power outages, power surges, or physical damage caused by animals chewing on wires.
Even environmental issues, such as natural disasters, can lead to power failure. server availability. In 2012, Hurricane Sandy caused flooding and power outages in many data centers in New York, affecting millions of websites. In another case, in May 2021, a fire destroyed one of OVHCloud’s data centers.
Therefore, an externally stored WordPress backup is critical.If your backups are stored on the same server or even with the same host, there is always a chance that you will lose them with no chance to recover your website. But if you have backups stored independently of the host, you can restore your website on a different server without problem.
Errors due to installation or updates
Themes and plugins improve the functionality of your website to a great extent. However, as these plugins are often developed by different programmers, they don’t necessarily work well together. Avoiding plugins and themes is not a solution, but you can prepare yourself for potential compatibility issues that can crash your website.
The easiest solution is to back up WordPress just before installing or updating anything . In fact, BlogVault performs an automatic visual regression when updating any theme or plugin. If differences are found on the website, you can go back to the previous version instantly.
Therefore, it is important to back up your WordPress site, especially before updating complex plugins like Yoast, WooCommerce, and Elementor.
Malware Infections
On average, 30,000 websites are hacked every day. Even the best security systems are not 100% invulnerable.
Malware causes a lot of trouble and loss for a business, but in different ways. Redirect malware steals your website visitors and organic traffic and sends them to a spam website, or a phishing attack tries to scam your visitors into providing personal information. Other hackers simply delete data and content from websites in defacement attacks.
A security plugin like MalCare can clean most hacks from your website in minutes, but it can’t recover deleted content and files if a hacker has maliciously removed them. In this scenario, backups are the saving grace.
We generally don’t recommend backups as a way to recover from malware attacks, because backups can also contain malware. But in cases of disfigurement, it’s the only way to get your website back.
Human Error
Human error is inevitable, especially when it comes to things like website maintenance. You may forget to renew hosting on time, or pages or posts may be accidentally deleted or changed. Or there may be errors in judgment, for example, if you applied some settings that resulted in a side effect, or if you made certain changes to the user interface but then you didn’t like it and therefore want to go back to the previous version. To avoid getting stuck in circumstances like these, you should have a frequent backup of your website.
You can also take backups as a best practice before executing important decisions, such as migrating a website or redesigning it. .
As mentioned, all of the above situations can lead to a loss of resources and revenue, and in the worst case, the loss of the entire website. Therefore, it is essential to have frequent external backups so that you always have a recent WordPress backup to restore to when things don’t work as planned.
Backups they take hours of troubleshooting out of you, because you can simply restore a backup and start over.
How Often You Should Back Up WordPress
Now that you know how important are backups, it is also important to know how often your website needs to have one taken.
We recommend daily backups as the best option for most websites, as they capture all changes made in a 24-hour period. If there is an error, the lost work is minimal and can be easily recovered.
Even for static websites, which see limited changes, such as brochure websites, we still recommend daily backups. Plugins and themes need to be updated, and a monthly or even weekly cadence can sometimes miss big changes.
You can also opt for real-time backups for high-traffic sites or e-commerce stores. Here, changes made in a 24-hour period are significant and not easily recoverable. Ecommerce stores have rapidly changing transactions, orders, and customer data, and for that, real-time backups are the only sensible option. With BlogVault, real-time backups capture website changes every 5 minutes and back them up.
Finally, you might also consider doing an on-demand backup before any major changes, such as UI upgrades, migrations, or fixes. This will ensure that you have a fresh backup to revert to in case things don’t go as planned.
What makes a good WordPress backup
There is a big difference between a good endorsement and a great endorsement. Here are the factors to consider when choosing a backup provider:
- Reliable backups and restores are the cornerstone of backups excellent security. You need backups that don’t time out and restores that work every time.
- Emergency restores even when the site is inaccessible.With an external panel, you can restore a website even when you can’t log in to wp-admin.
- Automatic backups because you need something that works on its own every time, without your intervention.
- Backups of at least 90 days, and the option to increase to 365 days if necessary. 30 days, which is typically what web hosts allow, is simply not enough.
- Incremental backups after the first sync. It is much more efficient to store only the changes made between backups, rather than a full backup each time. Less strain on your website resources, faster backups, and more efficient storage.
- Secure, encrypted backups so your website data and files stay safe from malware and hackers.
- Full backups of files, folders and the database. Partial backups are useless, because when things go wrong, they are very difficult to restore.
- Unlimited storage, which is not tied to the size of your website. Find a solution that won’t penalize you for a successful and thriving business. If you opt for cloud storage services, the costs can add up very quickly.
- Frequently enough for websites, which means daily website backups, with the option of short-interval backups for high traffic sites.
- Off-site backups are essential and should always be independent of the web host and website server. Cloud storage is ideal, but if you choose your own cloud service, costs will increase.
BlogVault meets all of the above criteria, plus a few more benefits. It’s easy to set up BlogVault even on WooCommerce websites and multisites. There is no configuration needed and you can contact support 24/7.
Conclusion
WordPress backups are a non-negotiable part of your website maintenance toolkit. Now that you know how to backup a WordPress site, you should know how to restore it in case something goes wrong. We also have a guide for that. Alternatively, you can install BlogVault and then restoring the backups also becomes a 1-click task.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I back up everything? my WordPress site?
The easiest way to back up your entire WordPress site is to use a backup plugin like BlogVault. You can customize what you want to back up, or alternatively, back up your entire website by default. BlogVault backs up WordPress core files, plugin and theme files and folders, and the database automatically.
How often should I back up my WordPress site?
How often should I back up your WordPress site depends on the number of changes you make to your website. The purpose of a WordPress backup is to minimize data loss and downtime in case something goes wrong.
If you have a high-traffic website or an e-commerce site, you should backup your website every 5 minutes. With other types of websites, daily backups are sufficient. These schedules are only practical when you use a backup plugin like BlogVault to automate and manage WordPress backups for you.
How do I backup my WordPress site without plugins?
You can backup your WordPress site with your provider web hosting or, alternatively, take manual backups from cPanel . Both methods have multiple issues and are known to fail during restores. Plugins are by far the safest and most efficient way to backup your WordPress site.
Should I backup my WordPress site?
Yes, you should always have a backup of your WordPress site. Backups protect your work in case your website crashes. You can easily restore a crashed site from a backup, instead of creating it from scratch again.
Can backups be automated?
Yes, backups can be automated, and ideally they should be. Automatic backups take place at a fixed frequency and require little or no manual intervention. Web host backup services and backup plugins usually have the option to automate backups for your WordPress site.
How do I backup and export my WordPress site?
The easiest way to backup and export your WordPress site is WordPress is to use a backup plugin, like Blog Vault. Once the plugin is installed, BlogVault syncs your entire site with their servers. You can then download the backup to your local drive or save it to a cloud service like Dropbox or Google Drive depending on your preference.
You can also manually backup your WordPress site, but this is a time-consuming process. You must download a backup copy of your files and the site database separately and then save them together to make a full site backup. This is why we recommend using BlogVault for on-demand backups that work.
Can I download my WordPress site?
Yes, you can download your WordPress site from a backup or directly from your web server.If you use a backup plugin like BlogVault, you can download a full copy of your site from the dashboard.
To download a backup of your web server, you must use File Manager in cPanel or FTP to download the WordPress files and phpMyAdmin to download the WordPress database. Remember to save both backups together for a full backup.
What is the best WordPress backup plugin?
The best WordPress backup plugin is BlogVault, which offers backups of Full external security for WordPress sites with unlimited storage. BlogVault restores sites perfectly every time and without the need to use cPanel or phpMyAdmin to do it.
How do I restore a WordPress site from a backup?
To restore a WordPress site from a backup, you must use the same method you did to download the backup. With manual backups, you must restore the files and the database separately.
We’ve created a step-by-step guide for each method, depending on which method you used to back up.
Where are my WordPress backups?
Depending on the method you used to back up your website, the backups WordPress security files are stored in different places. For example, if you are using your web host’s backup feature, most of the time, your WordPress backups are stored on the same server as your live site. In case you have made manual backups, your backups are stored on your local drive or on a dedicated cloud storage such as Dropbox or Drive.
The best place to store WordPress backups is offsite, which means a different location from your live site. To easily implement offsite backups for your WordPress site, use BlogVault.
How long does it take to backup a WordPress site?
The speed of a WordPress site backup it varies greatly depending on the method you choose. If you use automatic backups, such as with a dedicated backup plugin, your WordPress site is backed up in minutes. With BlogVault, each subsequent backup takes a few seconds because BlogVault performs incremental backups so you don’t load your website’s resources.
With web hosting backups, the backup process it takes a little longer. Every time a backup is made, the entire website is backed up.
Finally, the longest backup process is with manual backups. Manual backups require human intervention and effort and therefore take a considerable amount of time. Additionally, manual backups, and indeed restores, are prone to errors, which also increases time.
How to backup a WordPress site for free?
To backup a WordPress site for free free, you must perform a manual backup. Download WordPress files and folders from the File Manager in cPanel or via FTP; and then export the WordPress database from phpMyAdmin.
Some web hosts include backups as part of their hosting package, so check with your web host if this is the case.
How to backup WordPress without FTP access?
To backup your WordPress site without FTP access, use BlogVault, a dedicated WordPress backup plugin. BlogVault is one of the only backup plugins that does not require FTP access to backup your website.
Alternatively, you can opt for a web server backup. Since the backup is stored on the same server as your website, you won’t need FTP access.
Finally, you can manually back up your WordPress files using the File Manager in cPanel. This is an alternative to FTP backups as you can only backup WordPress files and folders via FTP in any case.
How to backup a very large WordPress website?
To backup WordPress sites of any size , we recommend you use BlogVault, a dedicated WordPress backup plugin designed to back up sites of all sizes without hassle.
Other methods, such as manual backups, web hosting backups, and other backup plugins, will be able to back up small sites without too much trouble, although they are still not the best option for you. the backups. However, large WordPress websites are a special case, because three factors are immediately affected by site size: restore, storage costs and site performance. strong>
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First, let’s look at restorations. Restores are the other half of the backup process, and if your site’s backup isn’t restored correctly, the point of a backup is completely lost. Large backups are often not restored when using File Manager in cPanel. This is because cPanel was not designed to handle large files. Most backup plugins will also fail to restore large databases, which is especially critical in the case of eCommerce stores.
Next are storage costs, which are really two problems in one package. If you opt for manual backups, storage costs for large site backups add up quickly. This is especially true if you choose an external storage location, like Dropbox or Drive. The second problem is visible if you use web hosting backups.Because web server backups are typically stored on the same server as your website, you’ll likely use up those resources very quickly.
Finally, we have site performance. Most backup plugins and solutions use server resources to perform backups. Also, since backups are always complete, they place a significant load on the server during the backup and therefore have a noticeable impact on site performance.
So while you can theoretically use any of the normal backup methods to back up a large WordPress site, these three factors will affect how useful or effective those backups are.
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