Creating a website and have it up and running successfully is not a mean task. Imagine if after all the work you lose everything? You’d lose your mind too, right? Your site could get hacked, the hard drive fails, the computer gets destroyed or you accidentally delete your website.
Backing up your site with a website backup manager is an important part of running a website. Backups give you peace of mind in the event that you end up losing your website data. Backing up your website ensures that you always have a copy of your site files minimizing the stress and time of recovery.
Most WordPress hosting providers have limited backup services, but it’s important that you get a website backup manager. Once you have backed up your website you can always restore your files in case anything goes wrong.
According to a study by Backblaze, 38% of people back up their data only once or several times a year. 29% of website owners do not backup their sites at all.
What Should You Backup?
When backing up your website, there are two important things that you should backup. The first is your Wp-content folder. This folder carries all your images, themes, plugins and the files you have uploaded.
The other important thing to backup is your database. The database has all your web pages, posts, categories, and users. Do a full backup on your WordPress website wp-content folder and database to ensure that you have the entire copy of your website.
It’s important to regularly backup your website files to protect yourself against upgrade woes and to minimize the damage should your website get compromised. Backups are also great because they keep your website files protected even when you are using an outdated version of your WordPress site.
How to Backup Your WordPress Site
There are four ways that you can fully back up your website:
- Manual Backup
This is the quickest way to fully backup your WordPress files. Backup your files manually through FTP (File Transfer Protocol). When doing a manual backup, save all your files and folders in the same directory WordPress is installed on. Then download all your files in your web directory. When downloading, make sure you download hidden files such as .htaccess and .htpasswd as well. Your files will then be available for upload whenever you need them again. We recommend you backup your site at least once a month.
- Control Panel Backup
You can also use your website’s Control Panel to backup your website. Simply follow these steps:
- Login to your web host’s control panel account.
- Go to File Manager, select Web Root or Home Directory.
- Look for the WordPress directory that you want to backup.
- Compress the WordPress folder before downloading by right clicking it and choose the Compress option.
- Save the compressed folder in Zip archive format.
- Click the Compress File button to save the folder.
- Click on the compressed file and then click “Download”.
- Your compressed file will then be downloaded to your laptop. You can save a copy of the file to Dropbox or Google Drive.
Make sure that you repeat this process regularly to ensure you backup all new website content and files.
- WordPress Sites Backup Services
You can also use a specialized backup service provider to backup your website. Site Backup services process a simultaneously local and remote backup of your website. The service will transfer your WordPress file data to their servers. This means that you don’t have to spend your time doing the backup manually. This way, you’re able to save your archived files in a separate location other than your local drive. This ensures that if anything bad happens to your local drive, you can easily recover your WordPress files from the service’s servers.
- Backup Plugins
Another possible way to backup your website is through website backup manager plugins. There are so many WordPress backup plugins that you can choose from, you’ll totally be spoilt for choice. However, a lot of them only backup your database and not the Wp-content folder as well. So you’ve got to be sure you get the right one.
Website backup plugins are the best approach especially if you don’t have any knowledge of coding. To help you pick the right plugin, we have picked 6 of best WordPress backup plugins for you. Check them out.
Best WordPress Backup Plugins
VaultPress
VaultPress is one of the most popular WordPress backup plugins available. The plugin was developed by WordPress co-founder. This is a premium plugin that comes with different plans and pricing but you can get automated real-time cloud backup solution starting at $5 / month only. This should be pretty enough to do what needs to be done. Installing and setting up the plugin is pretty easy. It’s also easy to save and restore your backups. Using it efficiently is just a matter of clicks. There’s a plan that gives you security scans as well for added website security.
Ultimate Website Backup Manager
The Ultimate website backup manager will give you peace of mind by offering you regular backups of your website. You can schedule unlimited backups and the plugin will automatically and safely backup your website at the scheduled times. Use the plugin to backup all your WordPress sites on your domain. You can also save your backups to Google drive, Dropbox, Amazon S3, or FTP. With this plugin, you get to restore your previous backups in just one click.
The good thing about the Ultimate backup manager is that it’s easy to use even if you don’t know how WordPress backend works. The backup plugin will install in a matter of seconds and will do all the work for you.
Duplicator Free WordPress Plugin
Duplicator has a very high rating of 4.9/5.0 with over 500K active installs. Clearly, it’s not just a typical backup plugin. You can use the plugin to quickly clone or move your site to another location. This main feature makes it a powerful backup solution.
Unlike the VaultPress, the Duplicator doesn’t have a feature that allows you to schedule backups. However, it automatically moves your database to an SQL file then saves it to a ZIP archive file. The plugin then creates a special PHP file that you can use to reinstall the backup whenever necessary. To reinstall, simply upload the ZIP archive and the PHP files to your server.
BackupBuddy
BackupBuddy is another one of the most popular premium WordPress backup plugins. You can use the schedule feature to schedule daily, weekly, or monthly backups. You can store your backups in Dropbox, FTP, Amazon S3, Rackspace Cloud, even email it to yourself, or save it to BackupBuddy servers.
One of the greatest advantages of this plugin is that it’s not a subscription-based service. You have access to updates, premium support forums, and 1GB of cloud storage that you can use to store your backups. The plugin also allows you to migrate WordPress to a new host without any interruptions.
UpdraftPlus
UpdraftPlus is another great WordPress backup plugin worth considering. You can use the plugin to create a complete backup of your WordPress site. Then store your backup files on the cloud or download them to your computer. You can also create scheduled backups at a time and frequency of your choosing then store them to your preferred location. You can do all this with the free version but you can also get additional features and add-ons with the premium version.
The only complaint about this lovely backup plugin is that it has a cluttered user interface that makes it difficult for first-time users to find the options they need. Despite this, the plugin is still one of the highest rated in the WordPress plugins directory so don’t shy away from it.
BackUpWordPress
BackupWordPress is a WordPress website backup manager plugin with an automatic scheduling feature. You can use the feature to create different schedules to backup your database and files. You, however, need to purchase premium extensions to be able to store your WordPress backups to a cloud storage service such as Google Drive and Dropbox. The good thing is that the extensions are available for each service, and so you can buy only the one you need.
It’s All About Having Peace of Mind
It is important that you have a solid backup strategy for your WordPress site to ensure that your site remains secure and fully functional. Never take lightly that human errors and disasters can happen at any time so it’s better to be prepared than to be sorry. Invest in a good website backup manager that will cushion you from the stress and income loss should anything bad happen to your website.
Now that we’ve discussed the different ways you can backup your site and analyzed the top best backup plugins, don’t lose hours of hard work by failing to backup your site. Remember it’s not enough to relying on your hosting provider, backup your website today. Backing up your site will not take a lot of your time or money, but with all of the things that could go wrong and threats existing online, it’s a protective measure you should never ignore.