Last updated on July 7th, 2024 at 10:50 am
This is hands down the best backup solution for WordPress websites.
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Back in 2017, I wrote about my preferred WordPress backup plugin, UpdraftPlus – and now in the beginning of 2019, I love this plugin as much as ever.
Backing up your WordPress site is critical and UpdraftPlus recently released version 2 which adds some critical new features to their premium plugin. So let’s go over some of the best of these.
Get the UpdraftPlus Premium Plugin
Since I originally wrote about the plugin, I’ve had to use UpdraftPlus to restore some sites after critical failures and it’s never let me down.
UpdraftPlus Incremental Backups
This was arguably the biggest change to the plugin features. Prior to version 2.0, UpdraftPlus backups offered only full backup jobs. And to be fair, for the large majority of sites, full backup jobs are adequate.
But there are two instances where incremental backups can be very beneficial – and it just so happens both of these could be deal breakers if your chosen backup solution doesn’t have an incremental option.
Large Websites
If you have a very large site, a full backup might take a long time. In addition, regardless of which backup plugin you use, taking a backup eats up some significant server resources – so if your site is hosted on a shared server, this could be problematic.
UpdraftPlus provides incremental backups as a solution. You can schedule full backups only once in a while and then take shorter incremental backups in between to keep server resources available for your users (and keep your hosting company off your back for excessive usage).
Sites with Frequent Changes
If you have a website that changes multiple times per day or records important transactions, such as an online store, you might want to take backups more frequently. UpdraftPlus allows you to take a full backup as often as every 4 hours, but for busy online stores or news blog sites that might not be enough if restoring from the most recent backup might result in lost posts, sales records, & orders.
Fortunately, UpdraftPlus allows you to take incremental backups as often as once per hour. This greatly limits the amount of data you might lose by having to roll back to a recent restore point.
Simple Site Migrations
UpdraftPlus premium makes it super-simple to move your site to a new host or server. You simply take a full backup of your site before removing it from your server. Then you install a fresh WordPress instance on your new server, install the UpdraftPlus plugin and restore the backup. It’s that simple.
Site Clones – Direct Site to Site
Do you keep a test/development copy of your website? You should. And with UpdraftPlus, it couldn’t be easier. You can even take a backup from your live site and send the backup files directly to your development site.
UpdraftPlus makes it simple to ensure that I have copies of all my client sites so I can test updates and code changes before implementing them on their live production sites.
The Largest Selection of Storage Options
UpdraftPlus premium really throws out all the stops when it comes to all the places you can automatically send your backups – and you can send your backups simultaneously to as many different ones as you want.
So you could send your backups to your Dropbox account (or even multiple Dropbox accounts), and also send a copy to an FTP or SFTP location.
UpdraftPlus Premium: Simply The Best
Backing up your WordPress site using UpdraftPlus is one of the best things you can do for your online presence.
If you’re not backing up your WordPress sites now, it’s time you started. Get UpdraftPlus now.
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.
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