Backup your website with WordPress Plugins
As you know by now, WordPress is an extremely robust platform and has many plugins from which you can extend your website with. If you’re looking to backup your website, there are many options to choose from with varying flexibility and feature sets. Below are a few of our favorite WordPress backup plugins:
All-in-one WP Migration
This is one of our favorites as it allows you to completely backup your entire website with a click of a single button. You’re given many options of how you’d like to save your backup — from a single file for download, to ftp, dropbox, and more. This plugin saves your backup as a single usable file (WordPress files ..and database combined) which you can easily upload onto anyWordPress installation with this plugin installed and it will restore your website to the state of the backup.
Download All-in-one WP Migration
BackWPUp
This is another greatWordPress backup plugin. It allows you to backup your entire website, set up a backup schedule to ensure a consistent history of website changes in case your website breaks, you are able to restore your website to an earlier state. BackWPUp also allows you to upload your backups to a cloud storage solution such as AWS, Dropbox, and more.
VaultPress
We feel we have to mention this plug in as it was created by one of the founders ofWordPress and the team at Automattic, the brand behind the famous Jetpack plugin. VaultPress is extremely easy to use and not only provide you with consistent backup solutions but provides backups in real time, as changes are made to the website. And you backup is stored typically within minutes of your latest website changes. This plugin does require a monthly fee and they can deftly add up, but you can extend the functionality and feature set of this plugin well beyond many of its competitors.
Backup your wp-content folder via FTP
If you’re comfortable using an FTP client (we use the widely popular FileZilla, you can download FileZilla for free here) and are interested in securing a backup of your website manually, we can always do so by downloading and storing your /wp-content/ folder. The /wp-content/ folder contains all of your theme files, image assets, and website resources that your website needs to run on the WordPress platform without carrying the bloat of the base installation files.
To find this folder, simply navigate to your website root folder. Within the root folder of your website you will see the /wp-content/ folder, simply download this entire folder to save a backup of all of your themes, images, website resources, and more. We typically recommend that you store these files on a cloud storage solution, ensuring that you have a copy of your backup if something happens to your local machine.
To restore these files to your website, simply re-upload this entire folder and overwrite the existing /wp-content/ folder on your server.
Backing Up your Database
Part 2 of a manual backup includes exporting your database file. Your database tells your WordPress website what to do with the content, as WordPress is an extremely robust content management solution which uses the database as a directive to tell your website where the content lives.
First, you want to log in to your web host dashboard, this is typically found in a platform called CPanel, Plesk, or a number of other web hosting dashboard solutions, If you can’t find your web hosting dashboard, contact your web host and they will point you in the right direction. You’ll then want to look for a program called phpMyAdmin. When you log in to phpMyAdmin you will be able to select the database from the list of databases on your hosting server. Once you select the right database (you can confirm this by clicking the wp_options table and looking for the ‘siteurl’ field in this table which should reflect the correct domain name of your website), click export at the top of the page. This will bring you to a new page which gives you options of how you like to export this file, in most cases, you are fine with doing a simple quick export in the. sql file format. Again, we recommend that you store this file on a cloud storage solution to ensure that your database backup is not lost.
To restore this database, simply log in to phpMyAdmin, select the correct database, and click import. This will bring you to a new page where you can upload the database backup file you exported earlier and click import to complete the process and overwrite your existing database tables.
Back up your website with your Web Host
You should always check with your Web host as many web hosting solutions will provide you with an automatic backup service free of charge. Although some of these backup solutions do not play well with a content management solution like WordPress which must maintain a file structure and database in order to work properly.
Always check with your provider to ensure that your backup solution is the right fit for your website!
Need help backing up or restoring your word press website?
Have questions? Need help? Feel free to contact us directly we’ll do our best to get your website back on track and in working order. There are number of solutions beyond the scope of this article and we will be more than happy to explore all of the options with you.
