Keeping backups of your WordPress (WP) site is the only way to keep months or even years of work from being lost. Most website owners spend a lot of time thinking about their third-party backup software, which makes getting their files back easier. On the other hand, some people prefer to use the backup system that comes with WP, which might be a little harder to use. No matter what, the safety of your website is the most important thing.
The last thing we need to say before we start is that moving a WordPress site to a different domain and restoring WordPress from a backup is not the same. This is a mistake that people make a lot.
Different methods
As we mentioned in the beginning, one of the easiest ways to make backups is to find the right backup plugin or third-party software. So, you can have your website make backups automatically every so often, and you can also make backups by hand whenever you reach a big goal or just feel like it.
The biggest problem with manual backups is that they take a lot of time and work. So, people save things like themes and databases instead of backing up their whole site. This is especially true for people who ignore the advice of experienced website developers and stick with their custom-made layouts. Sure, storing information this way can help you save your website. But it also makes your work a little more complicated. The rest of the process will depend greatly on your chosen backup plugin.
BackupBuddy
BackupBuddy is probably WordPress’s most popular backup plugin, so we’ll discuss it. Log in to your website and go to the restore/mitigate page to restore your backup. Most of your work will be done if you have the importbuddy.php file and give it a good password. Now, if you have a complete backup, which we’ve already discussed, you need to get it from BackupBuddy and put it on your website. After that, you can safely delete all these files from your site.
On the other hand, if you don’t have a full backup, you must first download the files you didn’t back up. Please put them in a safe folder and then delete them from the root directory to start over. Once your root directory is clean, you must upload the backup and importbuddy.php back to the folder. Then, you need to go to your website and type in the password you made earlier.
From there, you can use a pretty simple wizard or look for more advanced options. Using your old databases may or may not be a good idea, depending on why you need to restore your website. If it was because of an attack by a hacker, you might do better to start a new database. Also, using third-party software like Security Ninja can make it less likely that the same problem will happen again in the future.
UpdraftPlus Backup
On the other hand, not everyone uses BackupBuddy. Some people like UpdraftPlus better. One of the best things about this plugin is that it makes full backups of your website, which helps you do this task more reliably. The files that UpdraftPlus makes are so small that some people store them in more than one place. For example, they can simultaneously be on UpdraftPlus, Dropbox, and Google Drive.
Like the last time, you need to start from scratch. This is easy to do by deleting everything in the root folder (when it comes to this directory). Then, you should reinstall WordPress and turn on the UpdraftPlus plugin. From here on out, things will be easier to understand. You go to the page for settings and then to the page for UpdraftPlus backups. A big button says “Restore,” which allows you to upload your backup files. Then you click “Restore” again and go through a simple, few-points-long wizard to fix the problem.
This process may seem easier than the one we discussed before. However, that’s only because the UpdraftPlus backup platform tends to focus on full-site backups instead of saving individual elements. Even though this may seem like a simpler process, it takes more time and resources on a daily basis.
In conclusion
Even though the two methods mentioned above and plugins may seem more trouble than you bargained for. Remember that you shouldn’t have to start over with your website very often. It’s kind of like the question of car insurance. It’s an investment you make with the hope that you’ll never have to use it.
Still, when it comes to protecting some of your most valuable possessions, it’s always better to be safe than sorry. There’s nothing more important to an online business than its website, and nothing scarier than losing it and all the data that goes with it.
