In this guide you will learn how to backup WordPress. You may have automatic backups with your hosting account, but this will show you how to make additional backups. You may ask yourself “why would I need to know how to do this if my host does this for me”.
Here’s a few reasons why you should have multiple backups available:
- Automatic backups may be only done monthly and need something done more regularly.
- Backups can fail – I’ve had an issue where hosting providers weren’t able to restore a backup.
- You may be experimenting with your WordPress site and you would need a backup right before. We do advise on setting up a staging site instead.
Backup WordPress Using a Plugin
There are dozens of plugins that will be able to backup WordPress for you. Often we recommend in finding a plugin that works for your specific needs.
We recommend in using UpdraftPlus, a free backup WordPress plugin with over 1 million active installs. There is a plus version also available.
UpdraftPlus makes it easy to backup WordPress, simply follow these steps:
- Install and activate UpdraftPlus.
- Navigate to Settings > UpdraftPlus Settings.
- Select Backup Now. A window will pop-up, simply click Back Up Now you don’t need to change any of these options.
- A progress bar should show up and give you the status of the backup, please note that larger sites may take longer than smaller sites. It may take a few minutes.
- Once a backup has been successfully completed, you may be able to download certain sections such as the database, plugins, themes, uploads or others to your computer or external hard drive. UpdraftPlus does offer automatic uploading to the cloud such as DropBox, Google Drive – this article won’t cover setting up automatic uploading to the cloud.
- If you want to set automatic backups within UpdraftPlus, select the Settings tab, and under Files Backup Schedule and Database Backup Schedule select when you want automatic backups to run. Such as every 8 hours etc.
That’s it, you can automatically backup WordPress or manually do it whenever you need a backup available. We do recommend in downloading the backup to Google Drive or to your computer as it’s always better to be safe than sorry.
Conclusion
This is a simple article on how to backup WordPress and use UpdraftPlus to do so. If you are able to work through the admin dashboard and comfortable in installing a new WordPress plugin you will be able to setup automatic backups in a matter of minutes.
Photo by Ryan Cheng on Unsplash
