WordPress Backup & Recovery: Protect Your Site from Data Loss
WordPress Backup & Recovery: Protect Your Site from Data Loss. In this blog post, we discuss the importance and methods to create a WordPress backup.
Have you ever thought about why creating WordPress website backups is essential? Well! Over time there has been a constant rise in hacking attempts and malware infections. In order to protect your data from being compromised or lost, it is essential to maintain regular backups. Also, there are cases when you might lose all your data due to system failure. In such cases, having a WordPress backup and restore solution prevents you from heavy losses. You quickly resume operations if you only restore your website right away.
But, what if you were one of those people who never had time to create a WordPress backup? Or you are a beginner who has no clue how to restore WordPress from a backup file?
That is why this article is for you. Let’s read WordPress Backup & Recovery: Protect Your Site from Data Loss.
What do You need to Back Up?
Even though the need to restore your website doesn’t come often, it is crucial to perform correctly when it does. For instance, when you are redesigning a website, adding a new theme that might damage your website, etc. You must create a backup, so if a website crashes, you reinstall it to its original state.
The wp-content folder is a directory within WordPress that comprises all themes, plugins, and files you uploaded in the past. Database, on the other hand, comprises all the posts, users, pages, and categories. We advise you create a thorough backup of your website’s database and wp-content folder. Also, make sure you have a copy of the entire website for future emergencies.
Why WordPress Backup and Restore Capabilities are important?
Following with WordPress Backup & Recovery: Protect Your Site from Data Loss there are common causes of unplanned downtime. They are: human error, server failure, and malware Infection. Even software bugs and flaws cause damage to your system and data. In some cases, provisioning new applications is the cause of downtime. There are several reasons for taking servers offline and you cannot stop it.
However, if you have WordPress backup and restore capabilities, you protect your data and restore your site. Here are a few reasons why having WordPress backup and restore capabilities is crucial.
- Protects against Data Loss: Server outages, human error, and other incidents result in irreversible data loss, if sufficient backups aren’t taken. No backup makes it difficult or impossible to restore your website to its prior state.
- Testing and Development: Before adding new plugins, themes, or significant upgrades to your live website, you must create backups. It will help you test them on a staging website. You can restore your website to the backup in case problems occur while testing, keeping the live site unaffected.
- Recovering from Website Issues: Your website may experience malfunctions or become inaccessible due to problems including software conflicts, theme issues, or plugin faults. With backups in place, you may quickly restore your website to a working state and undo the problematic modifications.
Potential Risks Leading to Data Loss
To build a holistic backup and recovery strategy, one must first analyze all types of risks that could wipe out your website’s data. Awareness of all the risks will prepare you to mitigate them. Next point WordPress Backup & Recovery: Protect Your Site from Data Loss article is to look at the causes of unplanned downtime. Let’s discuss some of the risks:
1. Security Breaches and Hacking Attempts – Since WordPress is a very popular platform with one of the best CMSs, it is on the target list of hackers looking for loopholes to exploit. If your website is hacked, the hacker gets access to unauthorized data. He can steal your data or erase your entire website.
2. Malware and Viruses – Viruses and malware infect your website via vulnerable themes, unsafe files, or plugins. Post infection, your website could be deleted, held for ransom, or manipulated.
3. Faulty Updates or Incompatible Plugins – Updates and plugins are used to improve the performance of a website, but sometimes they may cause incompatibility, which in turn corrupts your data or crashes your website.
4. Human Errors – Error is human behaviour, and with simple mistakes by the administrator or content editor, crucial files or database entries could be deleted from the website.
5. Web hosting Issues – Your website hosting service provider plays a vital role in the security and stability of your WordPress website. Poor backup protocols, data center outages, or server failures on the host’s part can destroy your website’s data.
6. Natural Disasters – It is very rare but still a possibility that your data is lost due to physical damage to the server caused by natural calamities like floods or fires.
Methods of Backing Up Your WordPress Website
To safeguard your data and make sure you recover your site in the event of any unforeseen circumstances, create backups. Choose from different options to create your WordPress Website backup.
Manual Backups
Most users prefer creating backups manually for their WordPress website. In that case, all they need to do is log in to the admin account for backing up the database and files. For downloading all your files, you must use FTP. Whereas, for backing up the MySQL database, it is best to use phpMyAdmin, an open-source software. Once you have all your data in one place, utilize the control interface. Even use cPanel to create backups manually.
It might seem a quick and easy process but doing it frequently can be a real hassle. Especially, if you set reminders constantly, it is best to choose backup creation using different methods. For this reason, a lot of people choose to use automatic backup services.
Pros of Manual Backup
- Allows creating database and file backups whenever you need.
- Your website and database backup tasks are completely under your control.
- You do not have to pay extra for any service.
Cons of Manual Backup
- It takes a lot of time to consistently back up databases and files.
- You must be familiar with the procedures to effectively create backups and perform restorations.
- Manual backups might not be as secure as automatic backups.
Automatic Backup Services
With manual backups, users often miss out on creating a week’s backup. However, with automatic backup services, you no longer have to stress about missing a day. Another reason why automatic backups are better than manual ones is that they easily connect your website using SSH/FTP. You do not have to struggle with installing anything on the server.
Pros of Automatic Backup
- Automatically creates regular backups and prevents you from missing a day.
- All you have to do is set and forget when it comes to scheduling regular backups.
- Reduces the amount of time and work in need for backing up your website and databases.
- Automatic backup programs frequently save to the cloud. This feature gives you a backup for your local storage in addition to the primary backup.
Cons of Automatic Backup
- Significant modifications you make to your website will not save until the next scheduled backup.
- If your credentials change or you incorrectly configure the backup method, it could fail.
WordPress Backup and Restore Plugins
WordPress provides access to several plugins that one can also use for creating website backups. Many users are familiar with WP admin and easily create a backup with the proper steps. You should pick the backup plugin that best suits your needs because each one has a different set of features. Also, the procedures for backing up and restoring data are different in the case of each plugin. By following proper steps and guidelines, you back up files quite easily.
Here are some of the popular plugins that you can use for backup creation, including:
- UpdraftPlus – UpdraftPlus is available in both free and premium versions and offers access to save data in different locations. Whether you are willing to store your data on Dropbox, Google Drive, or Microsoft Azure, you can choose any location. Additionally, UpdraftPlus runs comprehensive backups of all WordPress files, databases, plugins, and themes. The popular plugin gives you the ability to restore your entire site in case of an emergency.
- BlogVault – Another popular plugin that offers page speed monitoring, integrated staging, seamless site migrations, and along with backups and restores. BlogVault comes with a user-friendly dashboard, real-time backups, and a feature to create encrypted backups automatically on a daily basis. With BlogVault, restoring your WordPress website is a comparatively simple process.
- Jetpack – In accordance with your requirements, Jetpack offers automated backups that may be set to execute either daily or immediately. Jetpack guarantees that every website element has a backup and you bring it back to its original version in emergency. It even makes it easier for you to keep track of the history of your site’s backups and manage them efficiently.
cPanel Backup
Most website hosting companies use cPanel for backup creation. With cPanel, a web-based control panel, you may handle several hosting and website services, including backups and restores. Numerous hosting plans and packages offer automated weekly website backups.
However, cPanel also provides manual backup and restoration options for your website. With cPanel, you have the option to create a backup for the entire website or specific elements like Database, Home Directory, etc.
Pros of cPanel Backup
- Even individuals with no technical expertise can create backups using cPanel because of its user friendly interface.
- You can create a backup of the entire website or crucial data using cPanel.
- Users even have the option to create full backups or partial backups using cPanel.
- You can plan automatic backups to happen at regular intervals using cPanel.
Cons of cPanel Backup
- If you have a shared hosting plan, the amount of storage space on your hosting server may be limited
- Hardware failures might affect the website and the backups kept on the server.
- Difficult to restore your backups if you don’t have access to cPanel or run into technical issues with your hosting company.
Recovering Your WordPress Site from Backups
Even after taking all the precautionary measures, your site might still lose data or be hacked. In such a scenario, a well-executed recovery plan helps you to bounce back. The following points discuss the recovery of your WordPress website from backups:
1. Identify the Issue – Before you start your recovery process, find out the cause of the problem. Check if the problem is due to a faulty plugin update, hacking attempts, or any other issue.
2. Access Your Backups – Reach your backup plugin or login to your backup storage location to locate the last backup containing the most recent known stable version of the site.
3. Create a Staging Environment – You must perform your website recovery on a staging environment instead of a live site. This avoids affecting your website, and you smoothly test the restoration process.
4. Restore the Backup – The restoration process varies according to the backup method you use. Many backup plugins simplify the process by providing one-click restoration. Restore your website to your desired backup version by simply following the instructions given by the plugin or hosting provider.
5. Verify the Website – Once you are done with the restoration, check your website thoroughly for any errors or issues. Check if all the pages and content on the website are unaffected, and also perform tests to check the functionality of the website.
6. Implement Security Measures – After your site is ready and functioning well, you start reinforcing the security measures. Update everything, including plugins and themes, passwords, and security features, to prevent any problems that may occur in the future.
Thank you for your vital time and reading WordPress Backup & Recovery: Protect Your Site from Data Loss. It is time to conclude.
WordPress Backup & Recovery: Protect Your Site from Data Loss Conclusion
Most organizations create backups for their website, database, and files to prevent their business from heavy losses. If your local drives are not working, you quickly recover your WordPress installation without worrying. Even if you don’t often need to restore your website, it’s important to do it well when you do. Hence, we have listed some of the best ways to restore WordPress from a backup.
You can do the task manually, use plugins, cPanel or perform automated backup services. All these processes help to create a backup of your crucial data and restore it in no time. We have also listed the benefits and drawbacks of each method to make it easier for you to choose. Use one of these simple methods to back up your website if you haven’t already. Then you can unwind knowing that you quickly restore your site no matter what happens.
