Every day is not Sunday. In the web world, nothing is guaranteed. Sometimes our own silly mistakes do break the site. In rare cases, if some plugin/ theme is poorly coded, hackers can break through. Or, if Brute Force gets successful. In all such cases, you can restore WordPress to its last ‘Working Fine Stage’ only if you have Backups with you. WordPress updates, Theme updates regularly break the site. Major releases of WP, 5.6, 5.7, 5.8, etc. tend to break the site more. If you have a backup with you, you can restore it, provide a good experience for your viewers, and can make google search engines happy. You never want search engines to index sites in broken condition.
Backups Files should never be kept inside the home directory. i.e. public_html folder. Because if something goes wrong, the backup files may also get corrupted. You should keep Backup Files somewhere outside of WP. You can use your own PC, Drive, Dropbox, etc. Even if your hosting account gets hacked, you can restore all your sites back in a different hosting too.
Available Backup Options for WordPress
- Hosting Provider Backup
- Manual Backup through cPanel/ Hosting Panel
- Plugin based Backup
- Remote Backup through Plugin
Hosting Provider Backup
Depending on the Hosting Plan you choose i.e, Basic, Premium, or Business, the hosting company will provide you with a free or paid backup solution. The hosting company will take back up all the sites you select and will save them in a different place. It can be cloud, s3 bucket, etc. You can select the backup interval either daily or weekly which depends on your hosting plan.
We suggest not to rely ONLY on Hosting Provider Backup, always have 2 options at least.
Manual Backup through cPanel/ Hosting Panel
This is a completely manual process. The backup time depends on the size of the website. The process is very simple. You will connect to your hosting account through FTP. You will download all the files of the site which is to be backed up. You also Export your ‘website specific’ SQL database by logging into your hosting account.
Plugin based Backup
WordPress is the most liked CMS (Content Management System) because of its OpenSource simplicity and availability of plugins.
By installing Backup Plugins of your preference, you can take backup of your site. You can save it on your PC, Hosting, or even can upload it to Google Drive, One Drive, S3 Bucket, Dropbox, etc with just a couple of clicks. It can be paid or free. Here is our list of Free Backup Plugins for WordPress.
Remote Backup through Plugin
There are plugins that allow you to take Automatic backups at regular intervals you select. Everything needs to be set in the Plugin options. We also recommend the MangeWP Worker plugin to take remote backups. You just install this plugin. There aren’t many settings. Everything is remotely controlled. You can also migrate your site using this plugin for free. As of now, there is no size limitation.