Are you confused about how to backup a WordPress website? Have you ever experienced the loss of your WordPress site? Or have you just discovered that you’d lost your site? Possibly you were a victim of a cyberattack.
Furthermore, your website may be broken due to installing a defective plugin, theme, or add-on. Possibly your hosting service failed — the nasty dog destroyed the server. It’s frightening. No, not the dog; you’ve lost your data.
You really can go nuts if you are confused about how to restore your valued WordPress site to its previous splendor.
Surprise: You don’t have to worry about it at all if you have a secure backup system in place. All you need to do is click the restore button and bingo! – you’re back in business. Have you noticed what I did there?
In this article, you’ll discover how simple it is to backup a WordPress website. Then, we’ll help you through the process of creating a complete backup of your WordPress-powered website. You can feel assured that you have a backup plan in place.
So, take out a pen and paper and get ready to take control of your WordPress backups like a champion. Ready? Excellent, let’s get started with backup a WordPress website.
What is the Purpose of Backup a WordPress Website?
A backup is just a copy of your website that you can restore if anything goes wrong. It’s a foolproof, preventative step that will spare you a great deal of unnecessary worry.
It’s similar to an insurance policy covering all of your labor, time, and money spent on your WordPress site.
What is Included in a WordPress Backup?
Now, to help you visualize, I’ll discuss in detail what defines backup a WordPress website. Two components make up your WordPress site.
- The first is your website’s files, such as theme/plugin files, scripts, and media, form the site’s structure and functionality.
- Following that, we have a MySQL database. Finally, this section keeps your blog posts, comments, and any settings you’ve made on the Settings page.
These two components together comprise the whole of your WordPress site.
Why am I Obligated to Create a Backup of My WordPress Site?
The bulk of low-cost web servers will claim to provide backups, but what they do is backup your MySQL database. Unfortunately, they do not back up your data, which means that if your WordPress theme gets damaged, you will be unable to restore your modifications.
Additionally, retrieving a copy of your website from their backups is a headache, so it’s advisable to backup your site on your own. You know, to confirm that everything is secure.
The complete backup we’re assisting you with here will protect your files and database. However, it implies that you have to reinstall the backup if you lose your site.
Now that we’ve cleared it up let’s backup a WordPress website.
Method 1: Using Your Hosting to Backup a WordPress Website
The simplest solution is to choose a hosting provider that does comprehensive daily backups of your WordPress site.
Managed hosting providers include daily backups of all your WordPress core files, themes, and plugins, as well as your database (including all of your media).
Additionally, at any moment, you can start backup a WordPress website.
If you want to manage backups from your web host to the next level, log in periodically and save your zip file copy to store on your hard drive.
Method 2: Backup WordPress Manually
Your WordPress folder has subfolders such as wp-content and wp-includes, files such as wp-config.php, theme and plugin files, and so on that your WordPress site requires.
The wp-content folder includes all of your themes, plugins, caching, and uploads, among many other items. You can’t afford to lose any of this information.
The wp-admin directory contains all the files necessary for the administration part of WordPress. Therefore you cannot afford to lose it as well.
WordPress core files are stored in the wp-includes folder. It is the folder that contains all of the primary WordPress code. You absolutely cannot afford to lose this code.
Step 1: Backup Your WordPress Files Manually
Download your whole WordPress directory to build a copy of your WordPress files. How? You can access your server using cPanel or an SFTP client.
cPanel Backup
It is so simple that you can do it in no time. For example, the following is the procedure:
- Sign in to your web host’s control panel and browse to cPanel. The cPanel is often the first page you see when logging in for most web providers.
- Open the File Manager and go to your public_HTML or Home directory.
- Go to your WordPress directory from here. That’s the folder where you want to create a backup.
- Currently, you cannot download the WordPress folder directly from File Manager. However, do not despair; compressing a folder is not difficult.
- Choose Compress from the menu bar after clicking on your WordPress file. Secondly, right-click on the folder and select Compress from the resulting drop-down menu.
- From the dialogue box that appears, select the compression type, such as ZIP, Tar, or GZIP. I always use ZIP files.
- After that, click the Compress File(s) button and wait for the procedure to complete. Your server will keep a copy of your compressed WordPress folder.
- Right-click the newly generated archive and select Download from the options. Or right-click on the archive and choose Download from the context menu.
- Save your backup to a secured area on your hard drive.
That concludes!
Suppose your web server utilizes a separate control panel, such as vDeck, Plesk, or others.
In that case, you need to identify your File Manager and follow the steps, which are as follows: Locate File Manager > Locate your WordPress directory > Compress > Download.
Repetition is necessary.
SSFTP Backup
We suggest utilizing a well-known file manager such as FileZilla or Transmit, lightweight and simple to use. First, you’ll have to install the program on your computer and acquire your hosting account’s SFTP access credentials.
Following that, log into the file manager of your choice (in this case, Transmit) and add the web site’s data, including a nickname, the website’s URL, your unique SFTP username and password, and update the port number to 2222.
After logging in, you will see a list of all of your WordPress files. Just choose all of your files with the mouse, right-click, and choose “Download Selected Items.” Once downloaded, ensure that the contents are compressed and rename the file to something memorable, such as today’s date.
Step 2: Create a Manual Backup of Your WordPress Database
Now that we have a replica of your WordPress files, let’s back up your WordPress database to ensure we have a complete backup in case of a rainy day. Additionally, this is so simple that you will be backing up your site at any time without breaking a sweat.
Simply go to your hosting panel and look for phpMyAdmin. It will be accessible under Database Tools for cPanel users.
However, according to your hosting provider, it can be housed at a different location. For instance, WP Engine users can access their phpMyAdmin directly from the main admin panel by clicking on the chevron symbol next to their installation(s):
After logging into phpMyAdmin, you need to see the following:
To get a list of your databases, click the Databases tab. If you installed WordPress using a third-party site like Softaculous or Mojo Marketplace, you might be confused about which database to use. What are my options?
Go to the WordPress directory in your File Manager and find the wp-config.php file. Select view from the context menu of the file by right-clicking on it. You want to find this line in the newly opened window:
Your database name is the number included in the second pair of single quotation marks, which in our case is ‘database name.’ Access your database in phpMyAdmin using this information. To open the database, click on it. For example, it would help if you saw something along the lines of:
By checking the checkboxes next to the tables, you want to backup. You can choose all of them. At the bottom, click “Check All” to choose everything at once. Once the tables have been selected, click the Export tab. Choose the export method and specify the SQL format:
Save your database in a safe folder on your PC by clicking the Go button. Remember that you should store duplicates in the same places as you did with your WordPress files. That’s all; your WordPress site is now completely backed up!
Wrapping Up
The best part you can do for your WordPress-based company is to implement a dependable backup solution. Anything can happen at any moment, but you can eliminate unnecessary worry by using backups. All it takes is a single click to restore a backup, and you’re back in business.
Apart from the above, you may also choose to backup WordPress website with plugins that have good reviews, such as Backup Buddy, Blogvault, etc
