How to Backup WordPress Site?

Introduction

Backing up your WordPress website regularly can protects against data loss, ensures quick recovery from website issues or downtime, and being able to create backup, makes it easy to migrate your site to a new hosting provider or domain.

How to backup your wordpress site (Step-by-Step)?

1. Install and activate the All-in-One WP plugin in your WordPress dashboard.
2. Once the plugin is installed, navigate to the “All-in-One WP” tab in the left-hand menu and click on “Backup & Restore”.
3. Click on the “Backup” tab and then click the “Backup Now” button to create an immediate backup of your WordPress site.
4. You can choose to exclude certain files or directories from the backup by clicking the “Advanced Options” button and selecting the files or directories you want to exclude.
5. Once the backup is complete, you can download it to your local computer by clicking the “Download Backup File” button.
6. If you want to schedule automatic backups, go to the “Scheduled Backup” tab and configure the settings to your liking. You can set the frequency, retention policy, and backup type.
7. Once you’ve configured your settings, click the “Save Changes” button to enable scheduled backups.

Note: It is recommended to perform the steps for backing up a website immediately after it is launched. This ensures that a backup is created and available as soon as possible, in the event of any unforeseen issues that may cause data loss.

How backing up your WordPress site can help your business?

• A backup is a copy of your website that you can use to restore your site to a previous working state if anything goes wrong.
• Backing up your WordPress site is critical for ensuring the security and reliability of your website.
• Losing website data or facing website downtime can mean significant financial loss, damage to reputation, and loss of customers for businesses.
• By creating regular backups of your site, businesses can minimize the risk of such events and ensure the continuity of their online presence.

Here are 2 backup methods that serve different needs:

1. Generating Backup Manually
2. Enabling Automatic Backup

Generating Backup Manually

Manual backups are usually performed by website owners or administrators to have a backup of their website’s files and data on demand basis.

• After generating a manual backup, users can save a copy of it and download it to their local PC for safekeeping. This copy can be used for recovery in the event of full production or backup system failure by uploading it to the system.
• Manual backups may be preferred by website owners who only want to back up certain important files and not the entire dataset. When performing a manual backup, users can exclude specific files or folders from the backup, which can save time compared to taking a full backup and retrieving only important files. As a result, taking a backup with certain files can significantly reduce retrieval time.
• Performing a manual backup at the latest time may be preferred by website owners who want to have the most recent backup files moved to a new host during migration. This approach makes more sense as it ensures that the latest version of the data is being transferred to the new host.

Enabling Automatic Backup

Automatic backups are typically scheduled by plugins or web hosts without any action required by the website owner.
However, some web hosts may charge for the service to enable automatic backups.

• Automatic backups may be preferred by website owners who want to ensure that backups are performed regularly without the need for manual intervention. This approach can help reduce the risk of data loss by ensuring that an up-to-date backup of the site is always available.
• Automatic backups can be particularly useful for websites that experience frequent content updates or changes, as they provide an easy way to ensure that the latest version of the site is being backed up without the need for the website owner to remember to perform manual backups.
• Automatic backup generation can be configured with a retention policy of X days, which means that backups are stored for two weeks before being automatically deleted. This approach can help ensure that the website owner always has access to recent backups while avoiding excessive storage of outdated backups. In the event of a hack, having a X-day retention policy for backups means that the website owner can quickly restore their site to a previous version from within the last two weeks.

Conclusion

Backing up a WordPress site is an important task that should not be overlooked. There are several ways to backup a WordPress site, including using automatic backup plugins like All-in-One WP, JetBackup, or cPanel backups, or manually backing up the site by downloading the necessary files and data to a local computer or external storage device. Both automatic and manual backups have their own advantages and disadvantages, and the best backup strategy will depend on the specific needs and resources of the website owner.

Regardless of the backup strategy chosen, it’s important to ensure that backups are performed regularly and that they are stored in a secure location. Backups can help protect against data loss due to hacking, server crashes, or accidental deletion, and can also speed up the recovery process in the event of a data loss. By prioritizing website backups, website owners can ensure that their site and its data are protected and secure.