A backup in WordPress should save several things, as there are several things that are unique to your website; These are your settings in the database, your files in your theme and then your images. If you have a backup of these parts, you can sleep better. A backup is your lifeline when things have gone wrong. Really wrong!
Three tips for backups
- What I think everyone should remember is that a backup is your last lifeline when things have gone completely wrong. This is your last chance to make things right!
- Backup is for cowards. Of course, if you like excitement, you shouldn’t make a backup.
- An untested backup does not allow you to sleep peacefully at night.
Backup on the database
The first thing you should back up is the database where all the settings and content of your site is saved.
You can export the database via phpmyadmin, but most people find that this feels both insecure and complicated and there are several plugins/additions that do just that. My favourite is updraft which I think is both easy to install and configure and despite the fact that I have used it on many sites over several years, it has never clicked.
In Updraft, you can choose how often (or manually) you want a backup in wordpress should be run and how the backup file should be saved. Many people prefer it to be sent by e-mail once a week.
You can choose to save the backup to Dropbox or any other cloud service you use, which is convenient.
Backup on theme
The next thing that needs to be saved is your theme. If you’re using a theme that you haven’t changed, you can ignore it altogether. Then you can download the theme from the web again.
But if you’ve got a cildtheme, you should have a backup of it in case something happens. Now, it’s probably the case that you change your theme very rarely. Maybe never? But, keep a copy of the files in your child theme to make sure you have them when something happens. There are usually no more than a dozen or so files.
Backup on images
Finally, you’ll need to save your images and this is also the most complicated part for many websites.
This is because there can be a lot of images and then it can get tricky because the backup will be large. It is also possible to use Updraft to send all images by email, but here other things can stop you, such as the email’s attachments being too large to be handled as an email. So it’s better to backup these to a cloud service. I personally send them to Dropbox.
I often see plugins and services that save all the files you have on your website somewhere. This is almost always unnecessary and means that you are saving thousands of files every week unnecessarily. Have a strategy for what is unique to your site because the rest can be found online again!
Incremental backup in wordpress
The point of making an incremental backup is that you only save the files that have changed since you made the last backup. Such a backup is of course much faster and sometimes not needed at all. An example of a plugin that works this way is WP Time Capsule. It is available both in a free version that you can try for 30 days and a premium version.
Even updraft can make incremental backups if you buy a licence.
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