Backup WordPress to protect against updates that break your website, hackers, and hosting provider problems.
Learn how to easily back up your WordPress website to Google Drive! This quick tutorial shows you step-by-step how to use UpdraftPlus to protect your site from crashes, failed updates, and hosting issues. Keep your WordPress site and content safe!
Change Hosting Providers
If you decide to change hosting providers, you can set up a new installation of WordPress with your new provider and restore your backup there. You’ll be up and running in no time.
Automatic Updates
Automatic updates can help keep your site secure. If a plugin has a security vulnerability, automatic updates will ensure that a fix will be applied as soon as it’s available.
However, automatic updates can break your site without you knowing:
- They can ruin its look and feel.
- They can corrupt your site’s files or database.
- WordPress will notify you if your site goes down hard, but not necessarily if it’s only partially broken. For example, if your layout is messed up or your checkout stops working.
This is why it’s important to have automatic backups too. You’ll be thankful for your backup if you need to get your site back to a known good state or roll back design changes or edits.
Pro Tip: If you do have automatic updates enabled then set up daily automatic backups.
Keep Your Options Open
Offsite backups are key when backing up WordPress. If your hosting provider goes out of business or becomes unresponsive, or if you need to change to a new one for some reason, you must be prepared and able to act quickly.
- If they have been backing up your files and keeping them on their servers, you’ll be out of luck if they go silent.
- This can also be a lifesaver if your hosting provider goes out of business or is trying to hold your site hostage for any reason. (There are definitely some dodgy hosting providers out there.)
Be Protected From Hackers
If your site gets hacked, it’s usually because of a weak password or an insecure plugin, which is out of your control.
Hackers will use your site to serve up malware and spam or attack other websites. Their hacks quite often result in core WordPress files being compromised.
Google scans your site regularly to look for new pages and posts. If Google finds malware, your site will be blacklisted; it’ll be removed from Google’s index, and visitors will receive dire warnings in their browser when trying to visit your page. Website owners often find out they’ve been hacked only after Google tells them.
Pro Tip: Having backups that go back several weeks greatly improves your chances of recovering quickly.
Important Backup Features
In addition to automatic backups, you need the ability to do a manual backup before you update WordPress. This is WordPress best practice.
Make sure you can keep a few weeks of backups on hand, or longer, if you don’t look at your site very often.
- You need to restore from a point in time before the trouble started.
- It can take a while before you figure out or get notified by a customer or Google that you have an issue. (Google notifies you when they blacklist your site for being hacked.)
- There is no log of when automatic updates happened, so this could be a trial-and-error process.
Pro Tip: Make sure you backup your site’s database as well as its files. Either one isn’t useful without the other.
Best WordPress Backup Plugin
The best WordPress backup plugin is UpdraftPlus. I use it on my sites and my client’s sites. Once set up, it just works, which is important for obvious reasons.
- Automatic backups
- It backs up both your site’s files and database
- Offsite backups to Amazon, Google Drive, Backblaze, Onedrive, Dropbox, etc., or even a few simultaneously. The various guides for setting up each destination can be found here: https://updraftplus.com/frequently-asked-questions/.
Other WordPress Backup Options
Another great option is a service like VaultPress. This is a premium service that’ll also make regular off-site backups for you.
Your hosting provider may also be making regular backups for you. These can be useful if you need to do a quick restore. Double-check to make sure and make sure you know how to restore from a backup or where to get help if needed. Remember: You need to be backing up offsite as well.
You can also use FTP to download your files and phpMyAdmin (or equivalent) to get a copy of your database. This is a little advanced for this article, so search Google if you’d like to learn more. It’s good for a one-off occurrence, but it’s way too much hassle for a regular backup plan.
Restore Your Site
To restore WordPress you have a few options:
- If a plugin update caused the problem, then you can restore it from within your existing website. It’s the same if you need to roll back some changes you made. Just find a backup that you want to restore and click the restore button.
- If your site was hacked, you should set up a fresh install of WordPress with a new database and a new password. During this process, create a new admin account with a new password. Install UpdraftPlus, connect it to your off-site storage, and then restore your website. Refer to the video here.
- It was a WordPress core update that broke your site, then you can do a fresh install of an older version. Download a previous release from here: https://wordpress.org/download/releases/
Tips After Restoring WordPress
Once your site is restored, turn off any automatic updates of any plugins that caused your problem.
If you were hacked:
- Change all the passwords for all key users (Authors, Editors, Administrators) on your site to be safe.
- Remove any user accounts you don’t absolutely need.
- Make sure that all of your plugins are up to date. If you have one that seems abandoned, remove it; find a replacement or find a way to live without it.
- You should also install a security plugin like WordFence. https://www.wordfence.com/
P.S. I have maintenance and managed hosting services which include automatic offsite backups. They also included managed updates, a firewall, uptime monitoring, reporting, and more.
