How To Backup Your WordPress Site

Making a backup of your WordPress blog or website is akin to things like eating more vegetables, drinking eight glasses of water a day or exercising more – we know we should do it, because we know that it’s good for us, but we just somehow never get around to it.

So why should you backup your WordPress site?

Because. You’ll. Regret. It. If. You. Don’t.

Yeah, unfortunately, making regular backups of your site is not something that necessarily provides much joy in the present moment (apart from a feeling of pride in how organised you are!). It’s more something that’s done to avoid future pain.

What it boils down to is that if your site crashes for any reason, you will feel Really Bad if you haven’t made a backup. Conversely, you will feel Really Good if you have. Personally, I prefer the latter.

How often do you need to backup your WordPress site?

That depends on how active your site is. If you’re running a WordPress blog and updating it frequently, then backup often. And yes, that can mean making a backup every day! On the other hand, if you have a traditional looking brochure-type website built on a WordPress platform (i.e. your site consists of, say, five pages of content that remain unchanged for long periods of time), then you don’t need to backup your site as regularly. Make a backup only when you make significant changes to either your site content or design.

It’s worth pointing out here that, regardless of how often your site content or design changes, you should also make a backup before upgrading WordPress to the latest version or installing plugins.

The nitty-gritty: How to make a backup of your WordPress site

If you’ve browsed through the details of our small business web design packages, you’ll notice that they all include two items: database creation and configuration and WordPress installation and configuration.

At that point, your brain may have zoned out. Geekspeak can do that to mere mortals .

Stick with me though, this is important. We specify those two items not simply to dazzle your mind with our brilliant technical skillz, but because you need both of those for your site to work properly.

The WordPress stuff consists of the core WordPress installation files, the administration panel, your site’s theme, any images or videos that are included on your site, and any plugins that you add to increase your site’s functionality. The database, on the other hand, contains all the content of your site’s pages or blog posts, links and WordPress settings (such as your admin password).

Since you need both, you have to backup both of these to ensure that you don’t lose anything in the event of your site going down.

Making a backup: The easy-peasy way (suitable for technophobes)

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Making a backup: The easy-ish way (suitable for entry-level geeks)

Option 1: Backup your site from cpanel

If your host offers cpanel access to your site, you will probably be able to make backups from here. Hostgator, for example, offers both a full site backup as well as the option to just backup your database (handy if your site theme and images haven’t changed, but your written content has).

Log into your cpanel (usually found at www.yourdomainname.com/cpanel – you will have received details regarding logging into your cpanel when you signed up for hosting). Scroll down the list of options until you find the section called Files and click on the option for Backup Wizard. You can also use the option titled Backups if you don’t need a “wizard” to walk you through the steps.

Click on Backup.

Then click on the corresponding back up that you’d like to do: either a full site backup or a partial back up of your database or home directory or email settings.

Option 2: Install the Backup WordPress Plugin

The Backup WordPress plugin offers an easy and convenient way to backup your WordPress site from your WordPress dashboard. Unlike other popular backup plugins (as detailed below), this plugin makes a backup of both your WordPress folder and database.

Log in to your WordPress dashboard, click on Plugins and then Add New. Type “backupwordpress” (without quotes) into the search box and click on the search button. The following results should appear.

Click on Install for the BackUpWordPress plugin, and then on Install Now on the pop up screen (shown below). You may get a warning that the plugin is not compatible with your current version of WordPress – I’ve installed this plugin on sites using the latest version of WordPress (as of writing) and it works just fine, but if you feel uncomfortable with this, then rather use one of the other methods for backing up your site. If you do choose to install this plugin, the irony here is that you should back up your site before doing so (as you would before installing any plugin), just in case something goes wrong!

Once the plugin has installed, click on Activate Plugin to use it.

Click on the BackUpWordPress settings link now available in your left hand navbar (at the bottom), and then on Start by configuring the options.

For most people, the plugin’s “Easy mode” is probably just fine, but have a look at the advanced options if you are comfortable doing so. The backup path should be filled in for you (save it and the folder will be created for you automatically). Also enter your email address to which you can have your backups sent.

If you’d prefer not to receive backups by email (since they can sometimes be quite large), you can instead use the option to download them once they’re done.

Option 3: Use FTP and the WP-DB-Backup plugin

Use an FTP client (FileZilla is fantastic) to copy your WordPress folder from your host’s server to your computer.

The exact files you copy across will depend on how much you want to backup. For example, if you want to do a full backup of your whole WordPress installation, then copy across your entire public_html folder. If that feels like overkill to you, and you just want the most important bits (such as your theme files and image uploads) backed up, then just copy those folders across. In the event of your site crashing, you can always reinstall WordPress from scratch and then restore those specific folders.

If you decide to go the whole hog and copy your entire public_html folder, be warned that this can take a while as it gets copied across unzipped. If you want to zip the folder prior to downloading it to your desktop, you’ll have to do this via the file manager in your cpanel. Then either download the zipped folder to your desktop via the file manager or go back to your ftp programme and copy the zipped folder from there.

The file manager is found under the Files section of your cpanel home page.

Once in the file manager, select the public_html folder and click Compress.

To download the compressed file from within the file manager, select the zipped folder and click on Download.

To back up your database, install the WP-DB-Backup plugin. The steps to do this are similar to those that I used above to install the BackUpWordPress plugin, except your search term will be different!

Making a backup: The hard way (suitable for those who speak Geek fluently)

To backup your WordPress folder:

The process remains the same as above – use an FTP client to transfer the files to your computer.

To backup your database:

Log in to phpMyAdmin. The link for this is found under Databases on your cpanel home page.

Select your WordPress database from the list in the menu on the left hand side.

Click on the Export tab.

Ensure that all the WordPress tables are selected in the box on the left hand side.

Under Structure, the boxes for Add AUTO_INCREMENT and Enclose table and field names with backquotes are likely to already be checked – leave them like this, or check these boxes if these options are not automatically selected. In addition, check the box for Add drop table.

Tick Save as file. If your database is large, it is recommended that you also select one of the compression options, such as .zip. Click Go to download your database.