WordPress is the internet’s most popular content management system, powering over 40% of all websites. However, despite its popularity and robust security measures, WordPress sites can still be vulnerable to cyberattacks, server failures, and user errors. That’s why it’s essential to have a backup and restore strategy to safeguard your website data and prevent the loss of valuable information. This guide will explore the best WordPress backup and restore practices and how to implement them to keep your site secure.
Why Backup and Restore is Essential for Your WordPress Site?
Backup refers to the process of making a copy of something. And a WordPress backup is meant to copy all your website files, database, and configuration stored in a safe location. This backup is stored at a particular place other than the live site.
If you have a backup, you can restore your site in case of any disaster, like hacking, malware infections, server crashes, or accidental content deletion. Similarly, a restore process is retrieving the backup data and restoring it to your live site. The restore process is critical if your live site is unavailable, and you must revert to a previous state to avoid losing valuable information.
Ways to Backup Your WordPress Site
- Use a Backup Plugin: Backup plugins are the most popular method of backing up WordPress sites. Plugins like UpdraftPlus, BackupBuddy, and Jetpack can automate the backup process and store the data off-site, usually on cloud storage. To backup using a plugin, install and activate the plugin, configure the settings, and schedule automatic backups.
- Use Your Hosting Provider’s Backup Service: Some hosting providers offer a backup service as part of their hosting package. The backup service can be daily, weekly, or monthly, and it usually stores the data on the server or cloud storage. To backup using your hosting provider’s backup service, log in to your hosting account, navigate to the backup section, and configure the backup settings.
- Use cPanel to Create a Backup: If your hosting provider uses cPanel, you can use the backup tool to create a backup of your site. The cPanel backup tool allows you to create a full backup of your site or select specific files and directories to backup. To backup using cPanel, login to your cPanel account, navigate to the backup section and select the backup options.
Ways to Restore Your WordPress Site
Once you have a WordPress site backup, you need to know how to restore it in case of a disaster. The restore process varies depending on the backup method you use. Below are the general steps for restoring your WordPress site.
- Restore using a Backup Plugin: If you used a backup plugin to create a backup of your site, the restore process is usually straightforward. Install and activate the plugin on the new site, navigate to the restore section, select the backup file, and follow the prompts to restore the site.
- Restore using your Hosting Provider’s Backup Service: If your Hosting provider offers a backup service, the restore process may involve contacting their support team and requesting a restore of your site. The Hosting provider will retrieve the backup data and restore it to your live site.
- Restore using cPanel: If you created a backup using cPanel, you could restore it by uploading the backup file to the server and using the cPanel restore tool to restore the site. The process involves navigating to the restore section, selecting the backup file, and following the prompts to restore the site.
The Bottom Line
It is essential to backup and restore your WordPress website to safeguard it. You can prevent the loss of valuable information and your website data in this way. There are many ways to backup and restore your WordPress website. We have pointed out some significant ways that can help you. Apply these methods and make your website secure.
