How to Backup WordPress Website

If you are a WordPress user, then you would have thought about taking backup of your WordPress website.

Many users do not feel the necessity to back up their WordPress website, at least until something happens to the website.

This could be losing your WordPress website or falling a prey to a malicious hacker. In such situations, a backup of the existing website helps. These are just a few scenarios, but in the real world, there could be more.

While hacking is one way of possibly losing your website, there are other ways too.

For instance, you install a wrong plugin or the hosting is done incorrectly.

Well, in either case, losing your website is a big nightmare.

Luckily WordPress offers multiple and reliable backup solutions.

Taking a backup of your WordPress website is extremely simple and can be done in multiple ways. In case you are an avid WordPress user then definitely you should be aware of these backup techniques.

Through this post, I will explain 3 methods to back up your WordPress website.

• Method 1. Manually using cPanel of hosting provider
• Method 2. Via FileZilla
• Method 3. Using Plugins

Apart from these, you may also use a third-party service that is available on the internet. Try using WordPress backup services from WP Buffs.

Let me start with the first method.

Method 1 – Manually using cPanel of hosting provider:

This is a simple way to create a backup of your website.

So what exactly should you do here is-

To illustrate you, I would use BlueHost’s cPanel as demo.

First login to your web host and navigate to cPanel. cPanel is the most obvious option you would find in most hosting platforms, after login

From here go to File Manager which will lead to your public_html or Home directory.

The file manager, as well as the public_html in most cPanels, is readily accessible.

So now that you are here, all you need to do is locate your WordPress directory since this is exactly what you need to take back up of.

To download this, first, you will have to compress this folder. Again compressing the folder using the File Manager is a matter of a few clicks.

As shown above, this is a simple compression which is readily available in the cPanel. You can also choose a compression type such as zip, tar, gzip.

Once you hit the compress file button, this will take some time to finish compression.

Once the compression is complete, you can download the WordPress compressed folder.

And that’s all – this completes your backup.

In case your web host uses a different control panel such as Plesk, then all you need to do is first locate the File Manager and follow the remaining steps.

Like I said earlier, there are multiple ways to create a backup of your WordPress website, let us next check more details about Method 2.

Method 2 – Via FileZilla:

Backup via FileZilla is also a simple technique and is yet another way to create a backup of your website.

Technically as we have seen in the previous method, all we need to do is take a backup of the WordPress folder available on the server.

To do this, you can use an FTP client such as FileZilla.

Before you start, on your local you will have to create a folder which can download your WordPress backup.

Next, open FileZilla and provide your credentials.

Once you have connected to the server, navigate to your WordPress installation.

Your WordPress installation may contain a few hidden files.

So ensure your FileZilla shows you the hidden files as well.

In FileZilla, you can use option Server Force showing hidden files

Once this is done, select all the files you wish to download and press the download option.

This will take some time to complete.

After this, I will speak more about taking backup of your database.

The database is one of the critical pieces of your website. It contains all of your contents.

If for some reason your database gets corrupted or you lose your data, then it is practically impossible to retrieve your website.

To back up the database, you will have to log in to database management panel on your web host. In most cases, this will be phpAdmin.

Click on the left side and choose the database you want to backup. You can also check the name of the database from the wp-config.php file.

You can click on the database which will show you a list of tables available.

Once you can see the tables, next click on the Export option.

This has two options.

• Quick – default option
• Custom

The default option will provide a downloadable file of your database. This is a suitable option for a small database. This is not compressed and when you import this, you would need a database without tables.

The custom option is a suitable choice for large databases and provides compression. This backup is fast. You can select the format as SQL and choose the database tables which require a backup.

In the custom option, you can choose to do a zip or gzip compression.

Finally, you can hit the “Go” button which will give you a compressed downloadable database backup.

Next, let’s talk about the third method of taking WordPress site backups via Plugins.

Method 3 – Using Plugins:

WordPress has multiple options to take a backup, one of which is using its plugins. Let me talk about a few popular WordPress backup plugins.

Here I will discuss in more details about

• UpDraftPlus (My Favourite)
• BackupBuddy
• BackWPup

1. UpDraftPlus

UpDraftPlus is one of the leading backup plugins available in the market. From the official website, you can download a free version as well as opt for a premium version.

This backup is so popular because of the different options it provides. It not only has a backup option but also supports automatic backups based on intervals, full or partial backups and easy restoration.

Taking a backup using this plugin is almost self-explanatory. You can back up by hitting the Backup button and follow the instructions.

Watch a video to look at how to back up your WordPress website through UpdraftPlus.

The plugin also has the ability to transfer the site back up to any location or place them on your server.

The plugin also maintains a log of the existing backups. An important list to refer, in case at any point, you need to restore the backup.

The backup using this plugin is well segregated into various categories. It is separately done for database and other files. So you can have a different backup schedule for each of this.

In case you need more features and a more detailed scheduling for backups, then you would require to use their premium version. The premium version also includes few other migration tools.

With the premium version, you get free support, free upgrades and free storage to UpdraftVault. Other features included are-

• Multiple storage destinations
• Automatic back up
• Migrator
• Importer
• Enhanced reporting
• Backup of more files allowed
• Advance support for Microsoft OneDrive, SFTP, FTPS, SCP and others

The premium version supports 4 license types-

2. BackupBuddy

BackupBuddy is yet another popular backup plugin available for WordPress. It was first launched in 2010.

Creating a backup with BackupBuddy is simple and is done in a few clicks.

It can back up everything that exists on your websites such as pages, widgets, media files, themes and plugins settings and many more.

Watch tutorial on How to Use BackupBuddy Plugin for backup:

It can provide you a complete WordPress website back up. Along with this it can also schedule automatic backups, store the WordPress backups offsite and restore the WordPress backup.

Few of its features are-

• Customization of backup contents
• Store backup files remotely
• Provide a downloadable backup zip file
• Schedule automatic backups
• Provide instant notifications about backup completion
• Restore website using ImportBuddy
• Database Rollback
• Individual file restoration such as .php, .html
• Supports WordPress migration
• Clone WordPress

BackupBuddy has 4 different plans:

3. BackWPup

BackWPup is a backup plugin which can be used to save your complete installation including /wp-content/ and store them in an external backup. This can do a complete backup, restoration, and scheduled backup.

BackWPup is more easy for advanced users as compared to beginners. It has several configurations and also provides a WordPress command line interface.

To back up your site, you first need to create a job.

You can also schedule and define when the job needs to be performed.

The features included are-

• Complete Database backup
• Complete backup
• Complete automatic restoration
• Encrypt and compress backup
• Log report via email
• List of installed plugins
• Administration of log files

This has 5 different plans.