How to Backup Your WordPress Site in 5 Minutes Flat

Last updated on July 7th, 2024 at 10:47 am

Knowing how to backup your WordPress site is crucial. Here's how you can do it in just 5 minutes flat!

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Table Of Contents

How to Backup Your WordPress Site in 5 Minutes Flat
Why Backing Up Your WordPress Site is Important
Step 1: Installing a Backup Plugin on Your WordPress Site
Step 2: Configuring the Backup Plugin Settings
Step 3: Creating a Full Backup of Your WordPress Site
Step 4: Storing Your WordPress Site Backup Files
Peace of Mind with Easy WordPress Site Backups
FAQs

Are you worried about losing all the hard work you’ve put into your WordPress site? One of the simplest ways to ensure you don’t lose any data is to backup your site regularly. Backing up your site can help you restore your site to its previous state in case anything unexpected happens. In this article, we’ll show you how to backup your WordPress site in just 5 minutes.

Why Backing Up Your WordPress Site is Important

Regularly backing up your WordPress site is essential to safeguard your hard work against potential risks such as hacking, malware, and server crashes. In the event of these issues, restoring your site from backup can prevent loss of time and effort.

Hacking or a Compromised Site

Every day thousands of WordPress websites are hacked by malicious individuals. Whether it be by social engineering, vulnerable plugins, or the use of nulled software, having a backup can make it easy to revert your entire website to a condition prior to the hack and essentially erase any damage that may have been done.

Hosting Problems

Server issues at your web host could cause a loss of your website. And while hosts generally keep their own backups, it’s never a good idea to rely 100% on your host during a catastrophic event. I’ve had one instance where a host had a server failure and one of the backups they had of a client site was corrupt. Fortunately, I was able to restore the site myself from my own backups.

So with all that being said, don’t leave the security of your data to chance – prioritize backing up your WordPress site.

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Step 1: Installing a Backup Plugin on Your WordPress Site

The first step to backup your WordPress site is to install a backup plugin. Some of the popular backup plugins are UpdraftPlus, Duplicator, and WPVivid, and Backup Migration. Installing a backup plugin is similar to installing any other plugin. To install the plugin, go to Plugins > Add New and search for the backup plugin you want to install. Once you’ve found the plugin, click on “Install Now” and then “Activate” to activate the plugin.

While you may decide to try various backup plugins, I’ve used WPVivid and UpdraftPlus both and can vouch for their integrity and reliability. In fact, I use UpdraftPlus Premium on all of my sites and all of my client sites. It’s never let me down. Just a little disclaimer as well: I’m an UpdraftPlus affiliate marketer, but I’d recommend it even if I weren’t – I really like the plugin and have a tremendous amount of trust in it.

Step 2: Configuring the Backup Plugin Settings

After installing the backup plugin, it’s time to configure the plugin settings. Each plugin has its settings, but most of them have similar options. You can select the backup schedule and backup type.

You can either choose a manual backup or set up a scheduled backup. It’s recommended to set up a scheduled backup so that it happens without you having to remember to backup your site.

You can also choose where you want to store the backup files. UpdraftPlus and WPVivid both provide options to store your backups in cloud storage such as OneDrive, Google Drive, or Dropbox. These are excellent options because storing your backups on your web hosting server means they’re at risk if the server goes down. By separating the location of your backups from your website, you ensure they’re available when you need them.

Step 3: Creating a Full Backup of Your WordPress Site

Once you’ve configured the backup plugin settings, it’s time to create a full backup of your WordPress site. To do this, go to the backup plugin settings and click on “Backup Now” or “Create Backup.” The plugin will start creating a full backup of your site, including all files and databases. Depending on the size of your website, this may take a few minutes. Very large sites with a lot of media files could take as much as 30 minutes.

Some plugins will also allow you to create incremental backups. These backups are smaller and quicker, but they do take longer to restore. A restore using an incremental backup requires all of the incremental backups going back to, and including, the last full backup. This means you have to make sure you keep all of the required backup files in order to have a successful restore.

Step 4: Storing Your WordPress Site Backup Files

After creating a backup of your WordPress site, it’s essential to save the backup files in a secure location. You can store the backup files on your local computer or in a cloud storage service like Google Drive, Dropbox, or Amazon S3. It’s recommended to store the backup files in multiple locations to ensure that you have access to them in case one location fails.

As I already said once before, don’t store the backup files on your web server. Backups stored there are not only at risk of being lost, but they’ll also eat up storage space on your hosting account which costs you money.

Peace of Mind with Easy WordPress Site Backups

Knowing how to backup your WordPress site and actually following through with doing it is essential to secure your data and ensure that you don’t lose all your hard work. With the steps mentioned above, you can backup your WordPress site easily and quickly. It’s recommended to backup your site regularly to ensure that you have the latest backup in case of any security issues. By creating regular backups, you can have peace of mind knowing that your data is safe and secure.

FAQs

How often should I backup my WordPress website?

My rule of thumb is at least once each day. If you have a WordPress website that has a high rate of change, such as an online store where orders are being placed 24/7, more frequent database backups may be a good idea.

How long should I keep my WordPress backups?

I keep backups for about 1 year. I would never really expect to have to go back that far, but in the case it turns out your site gets hacked, you may want the ability to go back far enough to determine when the hack took place so you can mitigate the issue.

What is an incremental backup?

An incremental backup is a backup where the only files that are backed up are those which have changed since the last backup. So if you do a full backup, and then upload an image to your site, the next incremental backup will include that image but not everything in the full backup. This makes the backups much smaller in file size and much quicker to run. On the downside, you’ll need all your incremental backups going back to, and including, your most recent full backup in order to restore your website. This makes restores take longer.

How to backup a WordPress website?

Of course, in addition to using a plugin, many hosts offer control panels like CPanel or DirectAdmin which allow you to take backups of your WordPress website. You can also use SSH to download your files and database manually. Overall, the plugin method in this article is generally the most common and user-friendly method.

What’s the best way to backup a WordPress website?

Using a plugin, in my experience, is the best way to backup a WordPress website with the caveat that you must use a robust and well-supported plugin such as UpdraftPlus or WPVivid. Those are 2 plugins I’ve used personally and can recommend.

How to restore a WordPress backup?

Restoring a WordPress backup will depend on the method you used for taking the backup in the first place. In the case of a plugin, you can refer to the vendor’s documentation on how to perform a restore. It’s usually very easy.

How to automate WordPress backups?

The plugins recommended in this article all have the capability of scheduling backups to happen automatically. In fact, these schedules are very reliable. You can also automate backups using CRON jobs on your server if you prefer command line instead.

Sharif Jameel

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Sharif Jameel is a business owner, IT professional, runner, & musician. His professional certifications include CASP, Sec+, Net+, MCSA, & ITIL and others. He’s also the guitar player for the Baltimore-based cover bands, Liquifaction and Minority Report.

How to Backup Your WordPress Site in 5 Minutes Flat