What is Website Backup? All You Need to Know

A website backup allows you to save copies of all your website data and files. Website backups are essential for recovering from data loss, security breaches, host outages, and other disasters that could bring down your site.

With a recent backup, you can quickly restore your website to its previous state in case something goes wrong. Let’s explore why you need a website backup and how to back up a website properly.

Why Do You Need to Back Up Your Website?

Backing up your website requires planning and effort but prevents utter catastrophe. Without a backup, you risk losing everything if:

• Your web host has an outage.
• A hacker deletes or corrupts your site.
• An update breaks your site.
• You accidentally delete important files and database data.

If your site goes down without a backup, you’ll need to rebuild your entire website from scratch. For an average small business website, this could take weeks and cost thousands in developer fees.

Instead of taking this risk, invest in solid website backup solutions.

Website backups give you the peace of mind that comes with knowing you can:

• Quickly restore your site if it gets hacked or corrupted.
• Get a crashed site back to a working state in minutes.
• Recover lost or accidental deleted pages, posts, products, etc.

Set up automated website backups from day one after building a new website. And test your backups regularly to ensure you can successfully restore your site when you need to.

How Often Should You Back Up Your Website?

Most website experts recommend backing up your site daily at a minimum. Configure automatic daily backups, along with additional weekly and monthly manual backups.

Daily Website Backups

Aim to back up your website every 24 hours. Daily backups give you granular restore points in case you need to reverse a recent change.

For example, suppose a faulty plugin wiped out your products. With a daily backup, you could restore to yesterday to regain all that lost data.

Daily automated backups take just minutes to configure yet save you hours of work if your site encounters issues.

Weekly Website Backups

Supplementary weekly website backups provide an additional layer of protection. Schedule manual weekly backups to supplement your automated daily backups.

Weekly backups create more spaced-out restore points. If your daily backups get corrupted or all include the same error, you can revert to an older weekly backup.

Weekly backups only take a few minutes to manually run. So set a reminder to perform this website maintenance task.

Monthly Website Backups

Monthly full website backups give you long-term insurance. Even if all your recent backups fail, a solid monthly backup lets you fully restore your site.

Plan to manually run a full website backup after making significant updates like:

• Adding or removing plugins/extensions.
• Changing web hosts or servers.
• Upgrading to new software versions.
• Migrating to a different platform or cms.

Monthly full backups take more storage than daily/weekly versions. But give you extra assurance that at worst, you only lose a month’s work on your website.

How Do You Back Up a Website?

Now let’s explore the options for actually backing up your website. Most website platforms like WordPress or online store builders include some backup capabilities. But you often need to add third-party backup software or services for comprehensive protection.

WordPress Backup Options

For WordPress sites specifically, you have several methods to back up your website:

1. Manual Backups Through cPanel

If your web host provides cPanel access, you can manually create WordPress database and file backups right in cPanel.

• Log in to cPanel and navigate to “Backup Wizard”.
• Choose to back up the database and public_html folder containing WordPress core files.
• Download the zipped backup files to your computer.

Pros: Free to use with most basic web hosting plans. Gives you full control over the backup process.

Cons: Requires downloading and organizing backup files yourself. Doesn’t work if you lack cPanel access. Needs to be manually performed for each backup.

2. Backup Plugins

Install an automated WordPress backup plugin like UpdraftPlus Backup/Restore. This lets you easily:

• Run manual backups on demand.
• Schedule daily, weekly, or monthly automated website backups.
• Save backups locally and/or to remote cloud storage sites.

Pros: Very affordable one-time cost. Automates backups on your schedule. Easy restore process.

Cons: Requires installing a separate plugin. Limited storage options. Less secure cloud storage increases hacking risks.

3. Managed Backup Services

Use a specialized WordPress backup service like BlogVault or BoldGrid Backup. These offer:

• Automated daily backups you control via the WordPress dashboard.
• Secure remote storage of backup archives.
• Easy point-and-click restores.
• Advanced features like real-time backup syncing.

Pros: Completely hands-off automated backup handling. Fast seamless restores. External storage decreases hacking risk. Site cloning enables staging sites.

Cons: Service fees raise overhead costs. Potential for rate hikes or service shutdown at company discretion. Less flexibility and control over personal data.

Other Website Backup Solutions

Beyond the built-in and WordPress-specific options above, many other methods exist for backing up both database and web files.

Here are two popular solutions to research:

1. External Backup Services

Consider an automated cloud backup service like CodeGuard or Backupify for low maintenance comprehensive website backup.

Sign up with an established provider specifically focused on website backup/recovery services at scale. They offer perks like:

• Browser-based dashboard to control backups
• Daily remote backups of all site data
• Generous cloud storage allocation
• Simple restore procedures

Just link your hosting account, schedule backups, and let their system handle everything else automatically.

Pros: Affordable set-and-forget website backup solution. Speedy disaster recovery procedures. Scales easily with site growth.

Cons: Recurring fees slightly increase overhead. Potential for bought-out services being discontinued or altered under new management.

2. Duplicate/Clone Sites

Maintaining a separate cloned site gives you built-in fallback backup. Use a staging site or alternate development server that mirrors your live production website.

Manually push new development work to both sites. Automatically sync production media assets and database changes to staging daily. In an emergency, make the secondary clone live with minimal effort or coding.

Pros: No monthly costs after initial server setup expense. Makes testing updates risk-free. Provides backup easily switched into place if primary site fails.

Cons: Adds hosting and server management overhead. Requires developer skills and effort to automate syncing both directions. Doesn’t address potential coder errors impacting both sites.

Key Website Backup Best Practices

Get the most protection from your website backups by also following these expert recommendations:

Store Backups Remotely

Don’t just save website backup files locally on the same hosting account. Store at least one backup archive offsite for redundancy if your host fails entirely.

External backup storage options include:

• Cloud sync services like Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.
• Connected FTP servers under your control.
• Secure special storage buckets from your backup plugin or service provider.

Encrypt and Password Protect Archives

Encrypt website backup zip files with a strong password not used on any hosting accounts. This adds protection in case a backup archive itself gets compromised or falls into the wrong hands.

Test Restores Regularly

Actually restoring old backups is the only way to confirm your backup solution works properly.

Try restoring website backups to a staging environment monthly. Time how long the process takes and verify restored functionality.

Identifying and addressing problems with test backups is much preferred over learning that backups fail when your real site crashes!

Always Backup Before Making Website Changes

Make it SOP to manually run a website backup before migrating platforms, installing new extensions, or undergoing other major website changes.

If anything breaks or errors occur during large updates, you can quickly revert to the pre-change state.

Schedule Backup Reminders

Use calendar appointments and project management software checklists to remind yourself when to manually create backups. It takes mere minutes but saves you from losing precious irreplaceable data.

Budget 15 minutes each Monday morning or end-of-month to create supplemental backups beyond your automated daily/weekly scheduled backups.

Do You Really Need Website Backups?

At this point, you may still wonder if website backups are truly necessary for your specific small business site. Let’s recap the key reasons maintaining backups is non-negotiable:

Backups Let You Recover From:

• Hosting outages
• Hackers deleting content/data
• Accidental content/plugin damage
• Developers botching site migrations
• User errors removing info

Backups Save You From:

• Paying to rebuild your site entirely
• Losing revenue while your site is down
• Losing all custom content forever
• Losing social media followers, email lists, etc when starting over

In today’s world, a business website without comprehensive backups in place is an unacceptable risk most owners should not take.

Don’t gamble your livelihood that catastrophe won’t ever strike your site. Invest in solid website backup solutions instead for complete protection.

Neil Beckett

Neil is an accomplished web, designer and developer with over 15 years of experience in creating and optimizing websites for small businesses and online entrepreneurs. Read full bio

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