How to back up your WordPress website?

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How to back up your WordPress website? Backing up my website seems like a lot of hassle. I have to do it every week. Isn’t that a bit excessive?

Backing up your website is your insurance incase anything goes wrong. It really depends how much your website is worth to you. If you had to create your website from scratch, including all the costs would that be okay with you?

You’re risking your website if you don’t back up

It will be dramatically cheaper for a web designer to upload a backup of a website than to build it from scratch. This is what you are protecting yourself from.

If there is a major issue on your website and you ask a web designer to fix it for you, it could cost you more in their hourly rate to find and solve the issue than it did for you to create the site in the first place.

It’s not just hacking you are protecting yourself from

The obvious reason to backup your website is to protect from hackers. However, the most common issue that will cause the dreaded blank screen is updating a plugin that is no longer compatible with your website. This issue crops up A LOT and if you don’t have a backup of the original website to reinstall you will need to get a professional’s help.

Okay, I’m convinced, how do I back up?

If you have a WordPress website, it is very easy to back up your website. Just download the plugin: Updraft Plus and hit the backup button. Make sure you tick the box to include your database in the backup as well as your files!

How often should I back up?

You should back up your website at least once a week to be on the safe side. With Updraft Plus you can download the actual files to your computer. Do this each time but you don’t need to keep every back up, as long as the website is working. I keep two weeks’ worth of back up files on my computer for each website.

What to do if there is an issue?

BEFORE you do any updates or make any changes backup your website. Even if you just backed it up the day before do it again! Make this a habit, this way if you come across any issues you can go to Updraft Plus and use the tools to re-install a backup! Hopefully you know what cause the issue to happen and you can bypass this next time.

Don’t risk your website

It only takes a few minuets each week to back up your website, don’t leave anything to chance, protect yourself. And if the worst does happen and you can’t sort it yourself, it should only take a few hours to get your website back up and running if you give the back up to a professional. If you don’t have a backup, you might have to re-create your entire website or pay an hourly rate to get it fixed.

If you need any help along the way, pop over to my Facebook Group and ask, I’m here to help! Let’s get those websites backed up and protected!