Backing up your website is an essential maintenance task. Think of it like an insurance policy. You never know when you’re going to need it, and when you do need it, you’ll be glad you have a backup.
Why you need to backup your website
WordPress is made up of several components, from themes, plugins, and WordPress core itself. All of these things receive regular updates and sometimes things break after an update.
- A theme update can cause your website to look different
- A plugin update can conflict with another plugin
- WordPress core updates may not be compatible with your current theme or plugins
1. Automated backups
Most website hosting providers have tools available to create automated backups. These are excellent tools and should be used, but don’t completely rely on them.
2. Manual backups
Manually backing up your website on a regular basis is recommended. Especially, right before publishing significant changes to your website. A good plugin to use is UpDraftPlus or BackupBuddy.
3. A backup for your backups
I’m a big fan of having multiple backups just in case something happens to my 1st or 2nd backup, so I recommend having a 3rd backup somewhere else. For example, you can backup your website and save the files locally on your computer or save the files on Google Drive, Dropbox, or Microsoft OneDrive.
What is your backup solution?
Let’s face it — technology is great, but sometimes things don’t go as planned, so you need to have your plan B ready just in case, especially if your website is the face of your business.
What is your process in case something goes wrong? There are plenty of options out there for backups, so I’m curious to know which solutions you’re using.
