The single most important thing you can do is to automatically backup your WordPress website.
Hey blog fam! Ever wonder what if I accidentally delete a post, or worse? what if someone hacks my website?
I have to admit, I was doing some updates to my website adding a plugin and out of nowhere my website crashes.
I installed a popular plugin that broke my website and I panicked. To make a long story short I was able to regain access to my site thanks to my web hosting company.
The really good thing about that situation was that I was able to restore my website from a backup I had just completed.
It was super easy and a lifesaver to have a full backup of my website at the click of a button.
Why Do A Website Backup
From my own experiences with loosing data I believe this is the most important part of running your blog.
You never know when your website will be attacked by hackers, so for this reason alone you need to back up your site.
Many of us don’t have coding experience and could make one simple mistake that delete’s a post or corrupts our WordPress database.
There are so many things that can go wrong causing you to loose time, content, and progress. Fortunately there’s a plugin to automatically back up your WordPress website
Automatically Back up Your WordPress Website With A Plugin
Related Reading: What Is A WordPress Plugin
UpdraftPlus is a WordPress plugin that does daily scheduled or manual backups to your entire website.
This includes all data, images, and even other plugins. It’s an easy to install plugin with a simple backup and restore process.
I have tried a few other backup plugins and found UpdraftPlus to be among the best.
Did I mention it’s free? Yes you can secure your website for free and not be worried about the possibility of loosing any of your work.
What I love about using WordPress and plugins is how little technical skill it takes to create a great website (with lots of practice).
When it comes to doing your backups UpdraftPlus will do all the work for you.
Aside from some initial setup you can automate this process and rest assured while UpdraftPlus does it’s thing.
Let’s start by installing the plugin and getting it active on your site.
Install UpdraftPlus
To automate your backups lets add the plugin from within your WordPress dashboard.
- Go to Plugins in your WordPress dashboard and tick Add New.
- Type UpdraftPlus in the search bar
- Click Install then activate to add
FYI-By this being the first time using UpdraftPlus you will need to setup your backup method before using the plugin.
You can choose from the list provided on your screen. I use Google Drive for all my backups.
It’s simple to use and my backups are available anytime I may need them. You can choose whatever you are comfortable with. We will do this step shortly.
Related Reading: Best WordPress Plugins For Bloggers
How Do I Backup My Website
On to settings!
In your WordPress dashboard locate the settings tab on the left of the dashboard hover over it then click UpdraftPlus.
Inside the UpdraftPlus section click on the settings tab and you will be presented with your first set of choices.
You will set the frequency for your backups ex: weekly or monthly and you will also set the number of previous backups to store.
You will also set the frequency for your database backup here too.
How Often Should I Backup My Website
It’s your preference but you may want to set this to automatically back up your WordPress content once a week, and keep the last two backups in your storage location.
This will make sure to keep the most recent version of your WordPress site available in the event of a loss.
A side note if you schedule weekly backups and you add new content after the backup takes place you can always do a manual backup to save the most recent work.
We will talk about the manual process in just a bit.
Setting Your Backup Location
Here you will see different options to choose for your files to be stored. I didn’t waist much time here.
I use Google Drive for other online documents so I decided to go ahead and choose GD as my backup.
PRO TIP
Create a new email and new Google Drive account to use solely for your backups.
Using GD is simple here you will be given the instruction to proceed with using GD. Just follow the link then choose your Gmail to verify.
The next page will be the UpdraftPlus page to complete the setup for adding GD.
That’s it you’ve just set set your backup schedule and added a storage location.
Let’s do a test run. Go ahead and click the big blue backup now button. This will create your first backup.
When it completes you will see a backup created under whatever day your doing this.
That backup now exists on your GD and if you happen to delete your WordPress site, (God forbid) or have any kind of attack you can backup your website.
How Do I Manually Backup My Website
Why create manual backups? As I said earlier in this article, if you set your automatic backup schedule to once a week that’s fine.
When you add new content or add a plugin, or make changes to your site, you want to take a backup to keep your website data secured.
To do a manual backup it’s simple. From within the UpdraftPlus plugin click the backup/restore tab.
Scroll down to the bottom of the page and you will see the big blue backup now button.
Click it!
You will see a notification page, make sure the first three boxes are checked just like in the image below and click the backup now button.
In just a few minutes your backup will be created and that’s it!
In Conclusion
As I said in the beginning of this article UpdraftPlus is an easy to use plugin to create backups of your website data.
If you do not currently backup your website, I suggest jumping on this right away.
I hope this was a useful guide that helps you protect your website contents.
Now over to you
I’m curious? Whats your favorite backup method? Leave a comment below and join the conversation.
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5 Responses
Very well-written and helpful article, all questions answered! I did not know that there is such a plugin too! Thank you!
This is really good information to know. When I first started blogging, many years and blogs ago, I had no idea how to backup or restore my site. This will be really helpful to new bloggers.
Yes I was in the same boat just starting out
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