With so much exciting stuff to come, the topic of Backups felt like a good starting point for our first official WordPressively newsletter!
“It's better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.”
-George Ellis
Backups are an important aspect to running a successful WordPress site. In managing over 100 client WordPress websites, we know having a backup system will come in handy at some point.
Before we dive into some backup plugins, there are two things you need to know about the WordPress backup process; what we’re going to backup and why were backing up.
Regardless of your Backup plan, there are some things you should always keep in mind when creating your plan of attack.
Adjust your backup schedule based on your site update and blogging frequency. This is a good way to predict the type of storage budget you’ll require.
As with backing up any data, keep multiple copies.
Three backups minimum at all times is good practice, if you have storage for more, up it to 5 this is best practice.
Have different tiers of backups to allow for storage optimization for larger sites.
But, always have a few full, large clone backups for disaster recovery.
Perform a manual backup on occasion to act as a failsafe for any automated backup solution you’re using!
While automation is great, always make sure you cover your “plan B - which should be some type of manual backup process”.
Simplistically, WordPress itself is a bunch of files and all your content and settings are stored within a MySQL Database. When you read about “cloning” a website (in our case for WordPress), both the user’s uploaded files and database are backed-up in order to successfully “clone” a WordPress website.
All your images and uploaded assets in the Media area of WordPress live in the /wp-content/uploads folder on your web-server (image above). Use an FTP program (like WinSCP, Cyberduck or FileZilla) to access and perform a manual download/backup of them.
There is a difference between your hosting company backing up your whole server setup and everything included, vs. just backing up the specific files and DB of a WordPress site. Even if you have hosting backups don’t solely rely on them, always have backups of your own.
If you’re more of a manual person, or want to dive deeper into the “Plan B” aspect mentioned above, the WordPress Codex offers in-depth instructions for how to backup your site manually. I highly suggest you read them and get familiar with the process if you’re the one doing the backing up.
If you’re looking for a (free and subscription) service that handles all WordPress website from a single Dashboard, then you’ll want ManageWP. If you’re a GoDaddy user you get their premium backup options free!
They’re a full-featured package and by installing the ManageWP Worker plugin and linking to the dashboard you can have fully automated backups (and more) with the flick of a switch!
Get stuck? They have fantastic support and can help walk you through any steps needed. We use them to manage over 20+ WordPress websites from a single Dashboard!
Another alternative to ManageWP above is Snapshot Pro by WPMU[affiliate]. These guys are WordPress guru’s and by joining their platform you gain access to all plugins and themes that can easily allow you to expand your WP website in incredible ways.
Similar to the features above, Snapshot Pro is a full-service cloning, backup and restore plugin. You can use it to migrate websites easily with a few clicks and also setup automated backups that save to cloud storage.
BackWPup is a free plugin that allows you to create complete WordPress backup for free and store it on the cloud (Dropbox, Amazon S3, Rackspace, etc), FTP, email, or on your computer.
It is extremely easy to use and allows you to schedule automatic backups according to your site’s update frequency.
Restoring a WordPress site from backup is also very simple. The BackWPup Pro version comes with priority support, ability to store backups on Google Drive, and some other cool features.
There are many other options both free and paid that you can look at but these are tried, tested and true options we have personally used.
With those options in hand, hopefully you’re backing up your WP website right now!
Curated by WordPressively.
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