WordPress Website Backup: A Comprehensive Guide for Both Beginners And Webmasters
In the age of advanced technology, our focus is shifted to the web and internet. We are running businesses on websites and have loads of private and confidential data on the web, as well. This situation asks for an ultimate need for the security and backup measures.
Although the web is a secure and all-time available source to you, it is true that anything can happen in this world and you can experience a loss on the web as well. Any bug or virus can lead you to face a big data loss or damage to your website. In this regard, it is important to have a backup of your webpage to minimize the risks of any major loss.
Why Do You Need A Backup?
Commonly when anything is on the web, it is considered as secured but your webpage needs a backup to avoid any future damage. Below are a few reasons to make sure you have a website backup:
Your Web Host Is Not Backing Up
It’s not your web hosting services provider’s responsibility to provide you with the backup services regularly. Sometimes, the services providers store the web content but, for their security, they are not liable to share it with you.
Storing the Original Version Is Not Enough
Sometimes when you make changes to the web page using any secondary or shared coding file, it will not reflect the changes in the original version automatically. You need to have a backup for any of the changes incorporated in the site. Furthermore, the valuable content you updated in the form of blog for the readers will only be stored on the web, no anywhere else.
Protection Against a Virus
Even after your efforts to protect your webpage from virus attacks, the backup can help you to protect your data. It helps you to turn back the clock after an attack and have the site running smoothly. It will not stop the attacks but will help you to reduce the chances of loss of data.
Backup is a Peace of Mind
When you know that something that can hit on your site and get all your efforts into a danger zone, the backup is your peace of mind. It will help you to take a back seat and relax.
Fundamentals of a Backup
Following are some of the fundamentals of backing up a website.
- It is important to store the backup at more than one location.
- A backup requires to be updated on regular basis.
It is, however, important to make sure that there is a local backup created on your personal device which is in your use. The other backup may be stored in a cloud or at a particular server which is meant for that purpose only. Storing a local backup may seem redundant to most of the people but it is a very effective technique to keep your data in case it is deleted from the cloud or from the server.
Nevertheless, if you don’t like local storage, it is recommended that you can use cloud storage to keep your backup. The backup for the website is dependent largely on the amount of work that is being carried out on the website. If you have an active website and you receive a lot of comments on your website, it is important to have a backup created after every week or so but if you don’t publish active content on your website, you can create a backup after every one month or so.
Backing Up a WordPress Site
WordPress is a very useful tool when it comes to innovation and ease of use. There are a number of plug-ins which can be used with WordPress in order to set up a backup, such as UpdraftPlus.
The following steps can be followed:
- After creating a plug-in and its activation you can go to the new tab by ‘Setting’ in the Word Press dashboard.
- Select the backup function from all the available options.
- Click on the backup you will be provided with a number of options to get things done. Just click on the recommended settings and move on with the process.
- Select the confirmation button and your backup will start.
It will take a minute or so, as it depends on the size of the website and the performance of the server. You can also restore your backup as well as you just need to click on the restore button. It also provides you with an option to make this process automated by helping you to schedule the time of the backup. You can also link your UpdraftPlus account to a cloud platform so that you never run out of storage and have enough space to manage your entire backup.
Backing Up Manually to the Cloud
You can also create a manual backup on the cloud to keep the data secured. The most important thing you need in all of this is to have direct access to your web server. There are two ways in which you can have access to your web server one is through FTP and the other is through hosting account file manager.
By using FTP and FileZilla, you can easily manage the backup. You just need to access a folder Public_html. In order to back up your files, you need to copy all the files in this folder and you are done with the backup.
Bottom Line:
It is very important to have a backup if you have a running website. This is very crucial to maintain the website and make it work smoothly. A few of options have been discussed in this article in order to back up your website data and avoid some critical situation with your work. This guide will help you to keep relaxed and prepare yourself for the hard times that can call up any time. By using the right backup technique, you can save time, efforts, and money too.
