Backing up data and files is not a new concept to us. All those pictures on your mobile, or those documents and files on your computer, you never forget to back them up, no? Similarly, your WordPress website shouldn’t be any different. We must never take easy on website backups because it is very crucial at the time of crisis.

But, why exactly is it necessary? And how should we back up our websites? Don’t worry, because I have answers for you. Give this article a quick read and learn how to backup your websites.

Why Are Website Backups Important?

There are no redos in real life, but that’s not the same case with technology and, that’s what makes the technology very fascinating. You may delete your website data by mistake or be unfortunate to get your website hacked, but if you back up the data, you will have the chance to resurrect all the valuable content you have lost. 

There are many ways in which you can wipe out your website contents, but there’s only one way to restore it all, through your website backup. 

Backing up data is a process where you store a copy of all the resources in a safe place so that you can retrieve it when the original data is erased or deleted. 

You never know when a hacker will bestow attacks on your website and, you must always be ready for all kinds of possibilities. Worst case scenario, a hacker attacks your website and wipes your website clean or holds the data in his possession and might ask you for ransom. 

But both the situations are just as unpleasant and, you cannot afford to give in to any of them. In unfavorable circumstances like these, for you to have the upper hand, you must be capable of reviving the lost data. That is only possible by backing up your website.

Human clumsy errors or hackers’ enthusiastic attacks are not the only ways for you to lose your data. There are several cases where installing an update for WordPress has changed something in a website. But do we let this unexpected possibility stop us from installing updates? No, because we all know the importance of updating our WordPress software for website security. Instead, we need to back up the WordPress site in case something goes wrong.

Similarly, downloading some plugins and themes can also disrupt your website or make changes to it. However, we cannot avoid using them because they are helpful in many cases. Once again, website backup comes to our rescue. 

How Often Should You Back Up Your Website?

It is pretty clear that backups are a must if you want to protect your website, but how often should you back up your websites? The answer to this question is varied, based on how often we update our website content. If you post every day, back up every day, or if you post weekly, back up weekly, you get how this goes, no?

How To Back Up Your Website?

We all love WordPress for various reasons, but one of them is none other than plugins. For every problem or issue we face on WordPress, we have a solution in the form of a plugin. Similarly, backing up isn’t a difficult task either because many plugins available that help us back up our websites effortlessly. If you are looking for a free backup plugin for your WordPress website, here is a list of plugins, and choose what’s best for you. Install the plugin of your liking, and you are set to go.

UpdraftPlus

UpdraftPlus is a free and trusted plugin that helps you back up your website easily. It allows you to schedule backups according to what suits best for you.

It will assist you in backing up to any cloud, which includes Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3, RackSpace Cloud, DreamObjects, OpenStack Swift, Updraft Vault, and Email. It lets you backup files, databases, plugins, and themes. You can restore your backed-up resources from your WordPress control panel.

Duplicator

Duplicator is one of the best plugins available to back up your website. It not only helps you back up your website but also lets you duplicate your complete website by enabling you to bundle all the data into a Duplicator package. You can backup an entire website or parts of it without any struggle.

BackUpWordPress

BackUpWordPress is another WordPress plugin that is popular among users. It helps back up the entire website, files, and databases with zero effort. It is a simple plugin that requires no setup after the plugin installation. However, we cannot backup to clouds like google drive or dropbox using this plugin.

It gives you an option to have each backup file emailed to you. It also allows you to use zip and mysqldump for faster backups if they are available. You can also schedule your backups with this plugin for automatic website backup..

Deleting data or demanding ransom for your data is one of the many things a hacker can do if he attacks your website successfully. Hence, it is essential to protect your website using WordPress security plugins like the Hide My WP to prevent any harm to your website.

Here are the features of the Hide My WP security plugin:

• It lets you hide or rename the themes and plugins folders.
• It can hide your WordPress.
• It helps you change WordPress permalinks.
• It will help you hide the login page of your website to prevent brute-force attacks. This feature will help you set up a login query and login key.
• It has a firewall that can block attacks like SQL, XSS, CSRF, read arbitrary files, and brute force attacks.
• It informs the user about:

1. Value (How they hack you?)
2. Page (Which plugin did they use?)
3. Impact (How dangerous is that?)
4. IP/ users (Where are they from?)

• It will assist in hiding or renaming WP-admins.
• It will disable direct access to PHP files and directory listing.
• It will let you minify HTML and CSS.
• It will allow you to change anything in your source code.
• It has anti-spam included.

Conclusion

If you back up your devices, chats, and images all the time, then you must know the importance of backing up WordPress websites. Several actions could lead you to lose your website data/resources. Just one unfortunate situation can destroy all your hard work in an instance.

To prevent this, we must always back up our websites, no matter how busy we are. There are many free backup plugins available on WordPress that make website backup easier. Install the plugin you deem the best and protect your website data from being destroyed for good.