How to Backup your WordPress Website
Web Design & Digital Media
How to Backup Your WEbsite
It all started 20 years ago when I was baking chocolate chip cookies with my grandma..
I’m just kidding. Click Here to go straight to the Backup recipe but I encourage you to read the information below to understand why it is important to keep Backups of your website.
Why you Need to Backup Your WordPress Website
First let’s get into WHY you should backup your website. Backing up your website saves the data from it’s last point. Were you ever in the middle of typing out a long email when you accidentally closed out the Gmail tab and had a moment of panic only to see that it was sitting safely in your Drafts and suddenly life was good again? Yeah, that’s kind of like this but for your business’s website. Or more commonly suggested, backing up your smart phone to your computer so that you don’t lose any of your contacts and your cherished photos.
Plugin and Theme Updates
It’s not common, but it does happen. Because WordPress plugins are created by different developers, not all updates will be compatible with one another all the time. If this is the case it could cause your website to crash. While it may not be the easiest task for you to retrieve your website data on your own, it makes a worlds of a difference to the website developer who you are working with. It could mean the difference between hitting an “Undo” button or rebuilding the entire website from scratch.
Ecommerce
If you’re running an Ecommerce store, it’s almost a non-negotiable that you should be backing up your website on the regular. Between updating products, processing payments and acquiring new customers, this is information that you really do not want lost. If you are running a large scale and high volume ecommerce website, you may even want to consider hiring help to ensure that you never miss out on a sale and that your website is always up and running.
Blogs
If your wesbite is active in blog posting, you definitely fall into the category of someone who should regularly backup their website. While you might be typing out your blogs in a saved Word document, reposting all your blogs can be a hassle.
Quick Points on Website Mishaps that can occur
- Plugin or Theme Update Failure
- Missed Payments
- Human Error
- Malware
How to Backup your WordPress Website with Updraft
If your website was created through us, you can bet that the Updraft Plugin is installed. It’s our recommended WordPress plugin for backing up your website and we have used it for several years now to download our data and restore necessary files.
We like visuals, so here is a Step-by-Step tutorial with written and photo instructions on how to backup your website using Updraft.
Step One:
Once you’re logged into your WordPress website, you will land on your dashboard page.
Step Two:
On the left side of your dashboard, is your backend menu. Click on Plugins
Step Three:
On this page is a list of installed Plugins. Look for the Updraft Plugin and click on Settings
Step Four:
Towards the upper-right corner, click on Backup Now
Step Five:
Click on Backup Now to backup your website. After this backup has been successful, your website is officially backed up on your WordPress website. But there is an extra precautionary measure to take.
Step Six:
On the latest backup, click on Database, Plugins, Themes, Uploads and Other to download the files for all of these categories.
Step Seven:
To initiate the download to your computer, click on Download to your Computer for all sections.
This is one of the most user-friendly ways of saving all of your data. You can also upload your Zip files to DropBox or backup your website through your hosting provider. Most hosting providers do automatic daily backups of your website but when it comes to your business, you should always take matters into your own hands and manually backup your data.
If you are not the tech savvy type, FourColor offers Website Maintenance services. You can Contact Us for more information on how we can help you.
FourColor Agency LLC, 2022