How to Backup WordPress Site: 3 Fast, Effective Ways

Backups are your website’s unsung superheroes, always ready to save you from digital disasters. In this post, we discuss methods to backup WordPress site. Don’t worry, by the end you’ll be a WordPress backup champion, ready to tackle any website crisis with confidence! 

First, we need to understand what is a backup and why it is so important:

What is Backup?

A Backup is a complete copy of your website stored in a separate location from the original. Backup is like saving everything from how it’s set up to all the content you and your visitors added.

To understand better, think of a house you built as your website. A full backup is like capturing a complete copy of the entire house(your website), including everything from walls and floors (website structure) to the decorations and furniture (your content). Now, imagine coming back and finding out that some big monsters(bugs or viruses) destroyed everything you built carefully. Here, the backup will be life-saving. A full backup would be like having a copy of that house, allowing you to recreate your house(website) exactly as it was before Monsters.

Ways to Backup WordPress Site:

There are mainly 3 options to back up your website, whether you want to save everything or just specific parts. We’ll explore these methods, starting with the easiest to use:

The easiest way to back up your website is using a plugin like UpdraftPlus. It’s the best backup plugin active on over 3 million WordPress websites. And has a 5-star rating on the WordPress plugin directory. UpdraftPlus has a simple interface that lets you set up automated backups with just a few clicks. 

We’ll do a backup using Updraft Plus because it’s easy to use and beginner-friendly. Plus, it lets you store backups in a safe location of your choice such as Dropbox or Google Drive making it easy to find and restore your website when needed.

You can download it from the WordPress plugin directory or install it from Plugins>Add New Plugin from the WordPress dashboard.

After installing and activating the plugin, you will see the ‘UpdraftPlus Backups’ option under the settings tab. 

Then open the Settings tab

You will see a lot of remote storage. Choose any secure location and connect it with UpdraftPlus.

For this tutorial, we’ll choose Google Drive. First, select the timeframe on which you want automatic backups directly in your Google Drive.

  After selecting ‘Google Drive’, click on ‘Sign in with Google’ 

As you can see, there are some advanced settings for selecting backup files. If you are not sure what to do, just leave them as it is.

After configuring, you will see a success message and a button ‘Complete Setup’. Click on it and there you go, you will get the backup file on the time you selected, straight into your Google Drive.

Many web hosts offer automatic daily or weekly backups as a part of their managed WordPress hosting plan. To check, you can read your plan’s terms or contact your hosting providers. This section provides a full overview of how to access backups from your hosting panel.

For this tutorial, we are using Hostinger but remember specific steps may vary depending on your host:

1. Login to your hostinger account.
2. See on the left column of hpanel and select Files>Backups.
   
   
3. You’ll see a list of existing full backups with the mentioned timestamps. it’s easy to restore with one click. But, To create a new backup, click on Select in the box of Generate New Backup.
   
   
4. A confirmation dialog box will appear, click Proceed on it.

A Full backup of the website will be generated after some time. The backup generation time depends on the size of your website files.

This method includes downloading your website files separately. It is more complex and difficult than above discussed methods but it gives you complete control over your website backups. 

 There are mainly two manual methods for downloading backups of your WordPress website:

For this you need software like Filezilla or SmartFTP (FTP Client) allows you to connect to your website’s server and download files.

• Connect to your website using your FTP client by entering your FTP hostname, username, port, and password. You can find these credentials in your hosting panel or ask the hosting provider to provide you with them.

• Click the Quickconnect button.
• After connecting, all files/directories will be open of your website on the right side of FileZilla.
  
  
• Now, navigate to the public_html directory (or the directory where your WordPress files reside) on the server (usually displayed on the right side of your FTP client). This directory contains all your website’s content, themes, and plugins. You can download the entire directory as a full backup or select specific files if needed.

Now that you’ve manually created your backup with these downloaded files, store them securely.

• Login to your account and look for phpMyAdmin. This tool is usually found under the “Databases” section or similar within your control panel.
• In phpMyAdmin, select the database from the left panel and choose the one associated with your WordPress site (it might have your site name, your FTP username, or a prefix like “wp_”).
  
  
• Select Quick – display only the minimal options as Export method and SQL as Format.
• Click Export to download the database as an SQL file.

Note: You might see additional options like selecting specific tables to export. Typically, you can leave these unchecked for a full database backup.

Essential Practices for WordPress Backups:

For secure and reliable backups of your WordPress website, consistency and security are key. Here are some best practices to follow:

• Regularly backup your website: The more you update your site, the more frequent your backups should be. Do weekly backups at least, or even more frequently if you update/modify your site content daily.
• Store backup files securely: Don’t store your website backup files in the same server where your website is. Keep them in a secure cloud storage or on any external storage.
• Testing Backups: Don’t just create backups and forget about them. Test these files regularly by restoring them to a staging environment to confirm the backup is complete and usable. 
• 3-2-1 backup rule: The 3-2-1 backup rule means that you should have at least 3 copies of your data, on 2 different storage media(e.g., cloud storage and local storage). Keep 1 copy offsite, in a different location from your primary storage.
• Strong security: Use strong passwords and make encryptions for the storage locations where you stored your backup files.
• GFS backup rule: GFS refers to Grandfather, Father, and Son rotation. This strategy is used in backups i.e., having backups on different timeframes. Son refers to daily backups, Father refers to weekly and Grandfather refers to monthly backups. Use this strategy to have various restore points depending on your needs.

Regular backups are your WordPress website’s best defense against unexpected data loss. Don’t risk your several years of hard work by not focusing on backups. Implementing a backup routine today ensures your website stays protected and readily accessible.

In this guide, we explored both automatic and manual backup methods and chose the solution that best suits your needs.

If you found this article helpful, share it with others to educate them to protect their websites!