Before updating your WordPress site or plugins, always make sure to have a backup of your website. Backing up your site should also be a standard procedure you do to protect yourself in the case something happens to your current site. Make sure to backup regularly.
You can talk to your host provider about backups. Some hosting companies give you the ability to back up your site from your Cpanel. Today we will be learning how to manually back up your WordPress site through WordPress and your Hosting.
There are two parts of your site that you need to back up: your theme, and your database
The theme contains the style of your site. So what your site looks like and how everything is laid out.
On your cPanel, you can also export and import your site files:
- Select ‘File Manager‘ -> Highlight ‘public_html‘ -> Select ‘Compress‘ and choose ‘.Zip‘ -> Highlight the Zip file you created -> Select ‘Download‘.
- Once you have the Zip file downloaded. You should delete the one still on your site to save server space.
- Whenever you need to restore your site with a backup, you can select upload from your File Manager.
- When uploading, overwrite all the files it tells you that you have another copy of. This will restore your WP theme to a previous version that you had backed up.
The database contains your posts, pages, and comments.
This is probably the most important, as your blogs are also kept here in the databases. So make sure to back up regularly to save all those important articles you’ve written!
- log in to WordPress -> tools -> export file.
- this will download all of your databases.
- to plug the database back in, use tools -> import.
You can also back up your full database from your host account:
- Select ‘phpMyAdmin‘ -> Click on the ‘Export’ tab .
- Keep the export method as its default. There are many Formats you can export your database but select ‘SQL‘ here.
- Select ‘Ok‘.
- This will download your database onto your computer. If you’re curious to see what an SQL file looks like, you can drag it on your web browser URL location.
- To restore your database, select the ‘Import‘ tab and upload this file.
Even if you have only one site, its best to keep these files somewhere where you can find them.
Put them in a folder named youWebsite_backup[date] with your site theme and your database.
Backing up through the use of Plugins
There are many plugins available through WordPress that can be used to back up and restore your WordPress website. Each one has their own way of doing so and some may even do regular backups automatically.
Make sure to read the documentation for these plugins to figure out how to use them. It is good to know how to manually backup your own website though, as all plugin installations have a chance to mess up your site – Backup plugins are no exception.
Keep your data safe and your site copy on hand! Happy posting!
Featured Image by congerdesign from Pixabay
Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay
