How to Get 100% Reliable WordPress Backups: Complete Guide

A WordPress backup is an insurance policy for your website. 

It is boring to think about when everything is going well. But when something goes wrong? That’s when you want a backup. 

The quickest way to backup your WordPress site is with a backup plugin.

While backing up your WordPress website can seem like a big task, it doesn’t have to be. In this article, we will show you different methods to backup your site, and make sure it stays safe.

TL;DR: Backup your WordPress site in minutes with BlogVault, the best WordPress backup plugin. Install the plugin on your website, let it sync and you’re done. Get automated, scheduled backups for your site, and never experience downtime again.

Understanding WordPress backups

A good WordPress backup is a reliable, restorable copy of your website. You don’t want to need a backup and realise that it is corrupted, hacked, or simply incomplete. 

This is a reality because all backups are not built the same. 

There are different types of WordPress backups:

Option 1. Plugin backup [Recommended]

Backup plugins for WordPress save you unending hassle.

No messing about with FTP or cPanel to download copies of your website. 

Backups take place automatically everyday. Need an additional backup before an update? Backup on demand.
The best part? Plugin backups are reliable.

All of these features, and much more in the best-in-class WordPress backup plugin, BlogVault. 

Plus, setting up BlogVault on your website is super easy.

1. Create an account on BlogVault, and simply add your site. 
2. Choose Automatic Installation and enter your wp-admin credentials.

And that’s it! 

The site immediately starts to sync, which means a WordPress backup is in progress. The sync process will continue in the background, and you can go about your day.

Why we recommend BlogVault backups

WordPress Backups are a tedious necessity. The good news is that they can be automated. 

You only need to think about backups when restoring your site or a part of it.

This is truly hands-free maintenance for your website. 

BlogVault are the best WordPress backups because: 

This is just the tip of the iceberg. There are many reasons why BlogVault backups are the best. We should know; we tested many of the backup plugins that are available. 

Option 2. Web host backups

Most web hosts offer backups as a part of their services, sometimes as an add-on or bundled with their hosting plans. Some hosts will also backup their servers regardless, as a safety measure in case of failures. 

To backup your WordPress site with your web host, first you need to figure out if backups are included in your plan or not. Either read the terms of your agreement, or reach out to their support. 

With some web hosts, you can customise settings too. Set up automatic scheduled backups, choose how many backups you want to store, and so on. 

We have complete reviews for backups and restores for the major web hosts: GoDaddy, Siteground, WP Engine, and Bluehost.

Why web host backups shouldn’t be your only backups

Web host backups are a good option for swift restores. They are generally stored on the same server as your site, so a full site restore is pretty fast. 

However, they cannot and should not be your only backup solution. There are several occasions where people have lost their websites entirely, in spite of getting web host backups.

Common reasons why web host backups are unreliable:

These are only a few of the reasons that you should consider opting for independent backups for your website. Web hosts take a lot of precautions to protect their systems, but they are by no means invulnerable. 

In August 2021, Web Host Canada experienced a major security breach, where hackers deleted much of the data on their servers. Through their live updates on the situation, it emerged that Web Host Canada was unsure about being able to retrieve the data at all. Fortunately though, after several sleepless nights, they were able to restore most of their clients’ sites. 

A few months later, GoDaddy had a huge security breach, which compromised the database and SFTP credentials of about 1.2 million users. Data wasn’t lost at that time, but the hackers had access to the websites’ databases and backends for over 2 months. Anything could have happened.

Option 3. Manual backup

Manual site backups are the least time-effective and most tedious to take. If anyone has to rely on a manual backup process, chances are they will start cutting corners and skipping backups, regardless of how dedicated they are. Manual backups are time-consuming and that time is honestly better spent doing something more productive. 

Having said that, it is useful to know exactly how to take a manual backup; a bit like knowing how to drive a stick, when all the other cars are automatic.

The first thing to understand about manual backups is that you are going to have to take two partial backups for a complete WordPress backup. That means, you need to backup the files and the database separately, and save the two backups together each time.

If you need a copy of your site, we still recommend using a backup plugin to ensure the copy is error-free. You can then export the site easily from a backup

Part 1: File backups

1. cPanel backups: Most web hosts provide cPanel, a popular control panel software, to manage your website. However, your web host may use a different one, like Plesk or Webmin. There will be a tool like File Manager on cPanel or Plesk, which will allow you to see your website files. Select all the folders you can see, and download them from File Manager as a zipped archive.
2. FTP: If your host doesn’t provide a control panel, then you can use FTP to download a copy of your website’s files. It is a little more time-consuming to do so though, and you will need an FTP client like FileZilla or Cyberduck to connect to your site.
3. SSH: If you are comfortable with the command line, you can use WP-CLI and SSH to download your site files in a zipped format. 

Part 2: Database backups

1. phpMyAdmin: If you have cPanel access, click on phpMyAdmin to access your database. You will need your database login credentials, which are available in your wp-config file or your hosting account. You can also get database backups by accessing phpMyAdmin directly from your browser.
2. SSH: As a companion to file backups from SSH, you can also download a database backup with WP-CLI.

Why we strongly recommend against relying on manual backups

Perhaps you want to make a one-time archive of your site, and feel that springing for a plugin is overkill. However, manual backups are plagued with problems.
 

These scenarios may sound nightmarish—because they are—but they are actual experiences of customers before they chose to use BlogVault. 

What to back up on a WordPress site

The short answer to this question is everything. 

Full backups with a plugin are your safest bet.

Partial backups are useless for restores, causing many failures and crashed sites. We don’t recommend ever taking backups of just this or just that. 

You can partially restore a website, say a file or a plugin, but always from a complete WordPress backup. 

When we say everything, it is sometimes tricky to understand exactly what we mean. So here is a short primer on the structure of your WordPress website.

There are 2 main components of your WordPress website: the files and the database. 

• The files contain WordPress core files, plugin files, theme files, configuration and settings files, and uploaded files. 
• The database contains everything else, like user information, posts, pages, links, comments, and other types of user-generated content. This data is stored in the form of tables like wp_posts and wp_comments for example.

Together, they constitute your WordPress website. 

You will see a lot of ways to back up the WordPress database or just the WordPress files, as we mentioned before. We advise against doing this, because it becomes much more difficult to restore a website from a partial backup. Always take full WordPress backups, and cherry pick the bits you want to restore thereafter.

Backups are non-negotiable

WordPress is prone to errors on occasion. Therefore, to protect your website if it crashes or if content gets inadvertently deleted, you need to have a recent WordPress backup stored on an external server; that is, at a different location from your web host server.

Recent backups can save your website, tons of work and all the resources you have invested in your website.

Web host or server issues

Independent and redundant backups are a must.

Your web host stores your website on a server, which is essentially a computer. And just like any other computer, servers can also crash for various reasons. Software issues can lead to servers getting corrupted in unrecoverable ways. There can be network connection errors due to outages, electricity surges, or physical damage caused by animals chewing through the cables.

Even environmental issues such as natural disasters can cause server unavailability. In 2012, Hurricane Sandy caused flooding and power outages to many data centers in New York, affecting millions of websites. In another instance in May 2021, a fire destroyed one of the data centers of OVHCloud.

Therefore, an externally stored WordPress backup is critical. If your backups are stored on the same server or even with the same host, there’s always a possibility that you can lose both of them with no chance of getting your website back. But if you have backups stored independent of the host, you can restore your website on a different server without issue.

Many backup plugins can connect to external cloud services as well, so you can backup your site to Dropbox or even the odd archive on Google Drive if you so choose.

Errors due to installation or updates

Who hasn’t had a site crash because of a failed plugin update? 

Themes and plugins improve the functionality of your website greatly. However, as these are often developed by different programmers, they don’t always play well together. Avoiding them is impossible, but you can prepare for potential compatibility issues.

Take an on-demand backup right before you install or update your site. 

Over and above that, BlogVault does a visual regression test before an update. If there are differences, you’ll get an alert instantly. 

Therefore it is important to backup WordPress sites, especially before updating complex plugins such as Yoast, WooCommerce, and Elementor.

Malware infections 

On average 30,000 websites are hacked every day. Even the best security systems are not 100% invulnerable. 

Malware causes a lot of distress and loss to a business, but in different ways. 

Redirect malware steals organic traffic and visitors from your website and sends them to a spam website. A phishing attack tries to scam your visitors into giving up personal information. Other hackers just wipe out data and content from websites in defacement attacks. 

A security plugin like MalCare can clean most hacks from your website in minutes, but it cannot bring back content and files if a hacker has deleted them. In this scenario, backups are the only saving grace. 

We don’t recommend backups as a way to recover from malware attacks, because backups can also have malware on them. But in cases of defacement, it is the only way to get your website back. 

Human error

Human error is inevitable, especially when it comes to things like maintaining a website. You may forget to renew the hosting on time, or pages or posts may get deleted or changed accidentally. Or there may be errors of judgment, for example, if you applied some settings that result in a side effect or if you made certain changes to the UI but didn’t like it afterwards and therefore want to roll back to the previous version. To avoid getting stuck in circumstances such as these, you should have a frequent backup of your website.

Safeguarding commercial data

Backups for WooCommerce are especially critical with customer and order data, or with law firm websites for instance. A server failure, malware, or even simple human error can wipe out months of work, and cause significant loss. Backups protect against those scenarios.

When to take WordPress backups

We recommend daily backups as the best option for most websites, as they capture all changes made in the 24-hour time period. If there is an error, the work lost is minimal and can be easily recovered. 

Even for static websites, which see limited changes, like brochure websites, we still recommend daily backups. Plugins and themes need to be updated, and a monthly or even a weekly cadence can sometimes miss big changes.

Real-time backups

You can also opt for real-time backups for high-traffic sites or e-commerce stores. Here, the changes made in a 24-hour period are considerable and not recoverable easily. 

WooCommerce backups, for instance, must save transactions, orders, and customer data that change rapidly. For that, real-time backups are the only option. BlogVault’s real-time backups capture changes to the website every 5 minutes.

As and when you need them

Finally, you should consider taking up an on-demand backup before any major changes such as updates, migration, or UI fixes. This will ensure that you have a fresh backup to roll back to in case things don’t go as planned.

Good vs bad site backups

There is a ton of difference between a good backup and a great backup. Here are the factors you should consider when choosing a backup provider: 

BlogVault fulfills all the criteria above, in addition to a few more perks. It is easy to set up BlogVault to backup WordPress multisites and even WooCommerce websites. There is no configuration needed, and you can reach out to support 24/7.

Conclusion

WordPress backups are a non-negotiable part of your website maintenance toolkit. Now that you know how to backup a WordPress site, you should know how to restore it in case something goes wrong. 

Alternatively, you can install BlogVault, and then restoring backups becomes a one-click task as well.

FAQs

How do I backup my entire WordPress site?

The easiest way to backup your entire WordPress site is to use a backup plugin like BlogVault. You can customize what you want to backup, or alternatively backup up your whole website by default. BlogVault backs up WordPress core files, plugin and theme files and folders, and the database automatically.

How often should I backup my WordPress site?

How often you should backup your WordPress site depends on the number of changes you make to your website. The purpose of a WordPress backup is to minimize data loss and downtime in case something goes wrong. 

If you have a high-traffic website or an e-commerce site, you should backup your website every 5 minutes. With other kinds of websites, daily backups are sufficient. These schedules are only practical when you use a backup plugin like BlogVault to automate and manage WordPress backups for you. 

How do I backup my WordPress site without plugins?

You can backup your WordPress website with your web host, or alternatively, take manual backups from cPanel. Both these methods have multiple issues and have been known to fail during restores. Plugins are by far the safest and most efficient way to backup WordPress site.

Should I backup my WordPress site?

Yes, you should always have a backup of your WordPress site. Backups protect your work in case your website crashes. You can easily restore a crashed site from a backup, instead of creating it from scratch again. 

Can backups be automated?

Yes, backups can be automated, and ideally should be. Automated backups take place at a fixed frequency and require little to no manual intervention. Web host backup services and backup plugins usually have the option to automate backups for your WordPress site. 

How do I back up and export my WordPress site?

The easiest way to backup and export your WordPress site is to use a backup plugin, like BlogVault. Once the plugin is installed, BlogVault syncs your entire site with its servers. Then you can download the backup to your local drive, or save it to a cloud service like Dropbox or Google Drive as per your preferences. 

You can also manually backup your WordPress site, but this is a time-consuming process. You need to download a backup of your files and site database separately, and then save them together to constitute a complete site backup. This is why we recommend using BlogVault for seamless, on-demand backups that work. 

Can I download my WordPress site?

Yes, you can download your WordPress site from a backup or directly from your web server. If you use a backup plugin like BlogVault, you can download a full copy of your site from the dashboard. 

To download a backup from your web server, you need to use File Manager on cPanel or FTP to download the WordPress files, and phpMyAdmin to download the WordPress database. Remember to save both backups together for a complete backup. 

What is the best WordPress backup plugin?

The best WordPress backup plugin is BlogVault, which offers complete, offsite backups for WordPress sites with unlimited storage. BlogVault restores sites perfectly each time, and without the need to use cPanel or phpMyAdmin to do so. 

How do I restore a WordPress site from a backup copy?

To restore a WordPress site from a backup, you need to use the same method as you did to download the backup. With manual backups, you have to restore the files and database separately. 

Where are my WordPress backups?

WordPress backups are stored in different places, depending on what you used to take backups. 

Web host backups are usually stored on the same server as your live site. Most backup plugins—not BlogVault—will also save backups on site storage. 

Manual backups are stored on your local drive or wherever you saved them. 

However, the best place to store WordPress backups is offsite, which means a different location from your live site. To implement offsite backups easily for your WordPress site, use BlogVault. 

How long does it take to back up a WordPress site?

The speed of backing up a WordPress site varies greatly depending on the method you choose. 

If you use automatic backups, like with a dedicated backup plugin, backing up your WordPress site takes place in minutes. With BlogVault, each subsequent backup takes seconds because BlogVault takes incremental backups, so as not to load your website resources.

With web host backups, the backup process takes a little longer. Each time a backup is taken, the entire website is copied. 

Finally, the longest backup process is with manual backups. Manual backups take human intervention and effort, so they take a considerable amount of time. Plus manual backups, and indeed restores, are prone to errors, which also increases time. 

How to backup a WordPress site for free?

To backup a WordPress site for free, you need to take a manual backup. Download WordPress files and folders from File Manager on cPanel, or via FTP; and then export the WordPress database from phpMyAdmin. 

Some web hosts include backups as a part of their hosting package, so check with your web host if this is the case.

How to backup WordPress without FTP access?

To backup your WordPress site without FTP access, use a WordPress backup plugin. BlogVault is one of the only backup plugins that doesn’t require FTP access to backup your website. 

Alternatively, you can opt for a web host backup. Because the backup is stored on the same server as your website, you will not need FTP access. 

Finally, you can take a manual backup of your WordPress files using File Manager on cPanel. This is an alternative to FTP backups, since you can only backup WordPress files and folders via FTP in any case.  

How to backup a very large WordPress website?

To backup a very large WordPress site, use BlogVault, which is designed to backup sites of all sizes seamlessly. 

Other methods, like manual backups, web host backups, and other backup plugins, will be able to backup small sites without too much problem—although they are still not the best option for backups. However, large WordPress websites are a special case, because there are three factors that are immediately impacted by site size: restores, storage costs, and site performance.

First, let’s look at restores. Restores are the other half of the backup process, and if your site backup doesn’t restore correctly, the point of a backup is lost entirely. Large backups often fail to restore when using File Manager on cPanel. This is because cPanel wasn’t designed to handle large files. Most backup plugins will also fail at restoring large databases, which is especially critical in the case of e-commerce stores. 

Next, there are storage costs, which are actually two issues in one neat package. If you opt for manual backups, storage costs for large site backups rapidly increase. This is especially true if you choose an offsite storage location, like Dropbox or Drive. The second issue is visible if you use web host backups. Because web host backups are typically stored on the same server as your website, chances are that you will use up those resources very quickly. 

Finally, we have site performance. Most backup plugins and solutions use server resources to take backups. Also, since the backups are always full ones, they load the server considerably during the backup, and therefore have a discernible impact on site performance. 

So, while you can theoretically use any of the normal backup methods to backup a large WordPress site, these three factors will impact how useful or effective those backups are.

Does WordPress automatically backup? 

No, WordPress doesn’t automatically backup your site. You need to set up backups with a plugin.