How to Backup Your Website & Why It’s Important
September 26. 2019
Let’s for a second imagine every website owner’s worst nightmare – your website getting hacked! You’ve just lost crucial data without which the normal activities of your business will be much more difficult to perform. We won’t go as far as to say that continuing with your work will be impossible – we hope the situation never gets to that point. But, the fact is that every single difficulty you would be facing after losing important data could have been prevented if you just backed up your website. People often either underestimate data backup or they believe that to backup your website will be a lengthy process. In reality, getting a backup file ready doesn’t take more than a few minutes.
Of course, you can always hire professionals who will perform offsite backups for you and protect your beloved website. But if you don’t feel like paying for pro services, here’s what you can do to ensure your safety. Pay attention – today, we disclose some very important information!
The importance of website backup
Just so that there aren’t any misunderstandings, you will first have to get familiar with all the reasons why performing a frequent website backup is important. In reality, there are many reasons why you should make the effort of backing up your website. But today, we’ll focus on the three most prominent ones:
- Protection against human error
- Reversal of the problems that happened during updates
- A weapon against malware infections
Backup your website and be safe from human error
Even computers can make mistakes so it would be ludicrous to expect anything different from humans. Mistakes inevitably happen, but how bad they affect your website depends on your approach. Anyone can delete an important file without meaning to do it and it wouldn’t be such a big deal – not if you have a backup ready. Once you make a mistake that somehow impairs the functionality of your website, the easiest and quickest thing would be to just restore the previous backup and move on. At least that’s what we here at WP Full Care would do!
Reverse the problems that happen during updates
Even though it’s very important to do timely plugin and core updates, those same updates can sometimes make your site go haywire – or at least some parts of it. That doesn’t mean you should give up on performing updates, especially when you take into account the fact they help your website run smoothly. It just means you should be smart about it. In the best-case scenario, you’ll have an automatic backup system set up on your site. But if you don’t have it, you can still perform a manual backup after which you will have a recent restore point available should anything go wrong. We hope it won’t, but it doesn’t hurt to be careful!
Fight malware infections by backing up your website
One of the most common mistakes people make is thinking that malware affects only personal computers. The truth is that no matter how protected you think you are, hackers have developed advanced techniques that will target your website, exploit its weak issues, and attack it. And no matter how much you try, telling when your site is fully clean and malware-free is very difficult. Even if you manage to remove malware from your website, it will still remain vulnerable. That’s when a backup will come in handy as it will help you clean your website faster.
How to backup your website
And now let’s tackle THE question for today – how can you backup your website? There are a couple of ways, but there’s only one that will allow you to take a side step and let others do all the work for you.
Hire a winning team when it comes to WordPress website security
Do you feel inept or unwilling to back up your website yourself? Luckily, you don’t have to do it – all you have to do is get in touch with WP Full Care. We will backup your website on our server and we can store your backups for as far back as 30, 60 or 90 days. It all depends on the maintenance package you choose. That’s one of your options.
Backup your website by using website backup services
Websites are intricate and complicated machines. Mess up just a single line of code and your entire website could go haywire. The same goes for data loss – lose one important document and there’s no telling what could happen. That’s why you need to prevent this by using online backup services of your choice. You don’t have to manually backup and store every piece of a document – the service does it for you in the background.
To give you an example of what we mean by a website backup service, let’s mention one of the best tools for storing and keeping documents – Dropbox. All you have to do is drag and drop a document into the app and it will be stored on a cloud server. As simple as it can be, right? Just bear in mind that Dropbox is used for documents only. The process of backing up and entire website with hundreds of documents will be a more complicated process.
Website backup with your hosting provider
With the hosting industry being as competitive as it is, a lot of providers such as GoDaddy and SiteGround are offering extra services that are free of charge. Or they only add a smaller sum of money to your monthly bill. That helps a provider stand out and it adds to the value of their services. And while it is true that it’s better to have any backup and restore plan than none, you should ask yourself whether you truly want to only rely on the backup you can get with your hosting provider. Why?
Depending on your hosting provider, your website could be backed up only once a week or less. That still puts your website at risk of losing important data if it crashes seven days after the last backup. And hey, some hosting companies aren’t even obliged to give you access to the backups they make. The backups are there for their convenience, not yours. Then again, don’t take this the wrong way – everything depends on your hosting company. It is our mere suggestion that you should rely on another form of website backup along with the one you get with your hosting provider.
Backup your website by using a designated plugin
These days, there are so many backup plugins on the market that making a choice could turn out to be difficult. Different plugins use different backup methods – no surprise there. Some allow you to backup only your WP database, others let you backup all WP files, and there are those where you can schedule an automatic backup. The location of the backup also varies greatly. Some backup plugins will let you store your files on your server (although that can put quite a strain on it), while others send the backup files to a remote location, such as Google Drive or Amazon S3.
You can also decide to use data migration tools to move your data from one source to another. Once again, your choices will be almost limitless. Some data migration tools move data to the cloud, while others don’t. And some are open-source and free, others are made for commercial purposes. Some of the most popular migration tools are Apache NiFi, Stitch Data, Snaplogic, Microsoft SQL, Centerprise Data Integrator, etc. All you have to do is do your research and choose the one which will work best for your company’s needs.
Do a manual website backup
Alas, sometimes, you are the only person you can truly trust. That’s why a lot of people opt for manual website backup. And even if you do already use a backup plugin or another form of website backup, it’s always a good idea to know that you have another approach available should the need arise. During the manual backup, you should be focusing on both the database and the site files. After logging into the server, you’ll see that these two are located at two different locations.
The site database can be accessed through phpMyAdmin, while you can reach site files under the File Manager. Before you start the backup, create two different files on your computer – one named Database and another Site Files. That’s where you’ll be able to find the documents should you need them for restoration.
What’s your verdict?
Have you made your decision? Any means you use in order to backup your website will be good – as long as you store recent copies of your important documents. It goes without saying that you should always hope for the best, but it doesn’t hurt to be prepared for the worst. And once the worst happens, you will be grateful you backed up your website on time.