How to Backup Your WordPress Website: The Ultimate Guide

No backups yet? No worries. But let’s make a deal here. You browse this epic, beginner-friendly resource on how to backup your WordPress website, then you go implement one of the methods we’ve laid out ASAP. Odds are you’ll thank us one day.

Taking regular backups of your site is like having an inexpensive insurance protecting you from losing all your hard work.

When you’re producing or editing your work in, let’s say, your favorite text or graphics editor, one of the most important and time-saving features has to be the “Undo” button, right?

Well, for your site, think of backups as an undo button and a virtual time-machine that:

• saves you from having to spend minutes or hours correcting your mistakes
• prevents you from having to start over from scratch when technology goes sour

We’re serious about protecting our customers from accidental data loss. So, while most website owners and bloggers can get away with one layer of regular backups (i.e. any single method described in this article), we implement four layers of daily automated backups for each site in our care.

I know what it’s like when you pour hours into setting up and creating content for your site, then suddenly something goes wrong—and poof—you’re now seeing a blank screen and realizing that smashing the refresh button isn’t saving the day.

Or perhaps some time you discover your site is behaving all funky because you let your guard down and got hacked as a result.

You don’t know what happened, your hosting company tells you they either have no backups, or the most recent backup is from ages ago, and you start pulling your hair out in frustration.

I’m involved in various WordPress support and blogging forums, and despite the importance and general ease at which you can backup a site these days, still so many people don’t do it.

In early 2015, CodeGuard, a backup service company, carried out a survey with 503 respondents based on the simple criterion that each participant had experience managing a WordPress site or blog.

Some interesting findings included:

• 47% of users backed up their sites every few months
• 21% did it a couple of times per month
• 22% of users actually considered backups NOT important
• 76% of users were not using any backup plugins
• 69% had experienced problems after updating a plugin, while 21% had experienced the “white screen of death” error regardless of cause

More interestingly yet, 19% of respondents would pay thousands of dollars to have their sites restored after things went sour, while 24% would pay “anything” to get their sites working again.

In an article recently published on ProBlogger, guest contributor, Larry Alton, writes,

Don’t let this be you. Also, you don’t need to depend on your hosting provider or anyone else to do these things for you, as you can readily do it yourself.

To that effect, we’ve created this 12,000+ word mega resource with over 200 guiding images to help make life a lot easier for WordPress site owners just like you.

Hey, you may even become an expert on backups. Cool, huh? Yeah…

We have included free and premium options as well as options ranging from easy to requiring a bit of technical know-how for seasoned users.

I will be showing you, step by step, how to backup your site:

• manually,
• by using WordPress plugins, and
• through 3rd party backup services.

If you’re also curious about how we backup our own and our customers’ sites, I’ll touch on this shortly.

[thrive_2step id=’948′][/thrive_2step]

By the way… what are backups worth if you don’t know how to restore them? So, of course, I’ll also show you how to restore your site’s files and database from any method you use in this guide.

Ready to dig in? All right, here’s what I’ve got for you:

Toggle Table of Contents

Before We Get Started, This Is What We’re Backing Up

Before we roll up our sleeves, let’s address a few things first.

It helps to know exactly what it is we’re trying to backup for safekeeping.

According to the WordPress Codex, a typical WordPress website is made up of:

1. WordPress Core installation files
2. Theme files
3. Plugin files
4. Images, documents, and other files
5. Files containing code (PHP, JavaScript, CSS, etc.)

In addition to the above, each WordPress site also depends on a database to store your:

• pages, posts, custom post types, and comments
• user profiles and customer accounts
• authors, categories, tags, links, etc.
• product orders
• all website settings

So, for a complete backup, you need both the files that make up your website, as well as the database.

The most important directory to think about when talking about your site’s files, is the wp-content directory. This directory contains your themes, plugins, and all files you upload to your site through the media library.

You don’t have to worry so much about other critical WordPress files, because you can get new copies of all of them by downloading a fresh copy of the WordPress software.

There are some backup methods you can use to conveniently copy just the wp-content directory, and there is nothing wrong with that.

The following image shows what comes with a default installation of WordPress. Most backup solutions will backup everything you see here:

Do I Really Need to Backup My Website?

Wait, are you saying you haven’t done it yet?

I’m just kidding.

I really encourage you to ask yourself the following question: “If I lose all the work I’ve put into this site tomorrow, would I be okay with starting over from scratch?”

If you feel even slightly hesitant answering “yes,” then find a way to backup your website as soon as you can.

You need to understand there are many things that can go wrong, which are outside of your control.

At any time, your site can be at the mercy of events like:

• a successful hack or exploit attempt infecting your site with malware or other issues
• bad change to settings causing a crash or locking you out of your site
• you mistakenly create errors while editing files, causing a crash
• theme or plugin conflicts causing a crash
• faulty WordPress, plugin or theme updates causing a crash
• your hosting provider deactivates your account without warning because you’re using too many resources
• other constant problems with your hosting provider so you’re forced to move your site elsewhere
• server hardware failures
• server power outages

The single best way you can prepare for these situations, in my view, is with regular backups stored somewhere outside of your server (such as on your computer, external hard drive, and/or a cloud storage service).

Let this guide be the starting point for you to proactively protect your work.

Do I Need to Backup My Site Using Multiple Methods?

Not necessarily, it depends on how important your website is.

It’s always a good rule of thumb to have at least two independent backup solutions running simultaneously.

Why? Because any single backup system you use, can fail for many different reasons.

The integrity of the WordPress files or database could become corrupted. Or the restoring mechanism can simply fail to work.

In these cases, it’s great to have a second backup system running if the first one fails.

As an example, say you have a backup plugin installed on your WordPress site. Then let’s say you were tinkering with some settings, hit “Save,” and suddenly your site was knocked offline or you locked yourself out from the admin dashboard.

Well, oops.

Now, what if the only way to restore your website back to working order, is to log into the dashboard, enter the backup plugin’s settings page and click “Restore”? Well, the site itself is down, or you’re locked out, so you can’t get there either way.

But if you had a second backup system running that can do its job independently of whether or not your site is down, then you can use that option to replace your dysfunctional site with a working copy.

How Often Should I Backup My Website?

This really depends on how often changes are made to your site.

How often do you upload files and media, publish new content, or change existing content? If customer transactions are stored in your site’s database, how often do these transactions occur?

If you make changes on a weekly basis, I suggest running daily automated backups. That way, you can set, forget and not have to worry about it.

If you have an active site with a lot of changes occurring each day, then you may consider backing up your site 2-3 times daily.

But if you’re barely touching your site from month to month, then you’ll be fine with a weekly backup.

How Many Backup Copies Should I Keep?

How many copies you keep will depend on a few things:

• How large is your website?
• Where are you storing the backups and, if you’re paying for storage, how much are you willing to spend?
• How important is the site, and how often do changes happen?

We keep at minimum 30 and up to 120+ copies of all sites we manage for our clients. One copy for each day.

For the typical small business site and blog, I suggest keeping at least 3-4 weeks worth of daily copies.

“That must be expensive or take up a lot of storage space,” you’d think. For most people, this won’t be the case.

You can very likely store 100+ full backups of an average-size WordPress website on an inexpensive Amazon S3 cloud bucket and only pay a couple of dollars per month.

In fact, below is the billing for one of our Amazon Web Services accounts.

On this account, we have 11 WordPress sites with a total of 60 copies of each (30 Duplicator packages plus 30 gzip-compressed SQL database files and 30 gzip-compressed WordPress file folders for each site).

What are we charged? Somewhere between $1.00-2.00 per month.

So, unless your site is over a dozen GBs in size AFTER being compressed, don’t expect to pay more than we are in the above example.

Where Should I Store My Backups?

Depending on the flexibility of the method you’re using, there are several places you can store your files.

You can store your backups on different mediums such as:

• on the same server hosting your website
• on a separate server, you’re using for storage
• on your computer
• on an external drive or USB
• in the cloud (Amazon S3, Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, etc.)

The above are not the only locations your files can be stored, but they are the most commonly used.

For most sites, we use a combination of

• temporarily storing backups on the hosting server
• cloud storage
• server snapshots for last resort emergency restores

Should I Use Automatic Backups or Do It Myself?

While it’s great to know how to perform backups manually, I always suggest people should configure at least one automated backup solution so they can relax.

You see… if you had to do it manually every time, you probably wouldn’t be bothered, right?

Automation is not flawless, though. So in case things stop working properly, make sure to periodically check that the backup files are actually being created, and take some time out to test one of your backups every now and then.

That way, you’ll know for sure you can count on your backups if and when disaster hits.

Should I Restore Both the Database and Files Every Time?

No. You may not always need to restore either the database or the files, and this really depends on the reason why you’re restoring your site to begin with.

As an example, if you changed a setting on your site that caused an immediate crash, then all you would need to do is restore the database given that the database is where all your settings are saved and you wouldn’t have lost any files.

With that said, some backup solutions in this guide will only let you restore everything (both files and database) at once.

You Have Covered So Many Options, Which One is Right for Me?

You’re right. There’s a handful of options to choose from in this guide. And as we research and test more backup solutions that turn out to be decent, we’ll include those here as well.

But this can also mean you’re left wondering which option(s) you should rely on for your own website(s).

We’re not going to leave you hanging though, so here’s a downloadable guide that will help you make a choice:

[thrive_2step id=’948′][/thrive_2step]

How We Backup Our Customers’ Websites

Perhaps some of you are curious and interested in how we handle backups for our customers, so I’ll give you a little glimpse.

For maximum flexibility, we use a combination of:

• The Duplicator Pro plugin (paid)
• ManageWP Orion backups (paid)
• Full local server backups of each website’s files and database using Linux shell scripts (free)
• Full backup snapshots of each of our hosting servers (paid)

Our Duplicator Pro backups are uploaded to an Amazon S3 bucket storage immediately following completion.

We will explore the free version of Duplicator in an upcoming section.

But the key advantage to using Duplicator, for us, is that the “packages” Duplicator creates allow us to quickly move (migrate) any website to a different server, with ease. Also, if a client wants a complete file and database copy of their site for any reason, we can easily “pass a package” to them.

If not for these two benefits, we wouldn’t be using any backup plugins since we can manage fine without.

We choose to upload ManageWP Orion’s backups to the Amazon S3 cloud.

The local backups are kept for 48 hours before they’re uploaded to a separate S3 bucket.

The server snapshots can be used in case of an emergency where all other restore systems fail (which will probably never happen).

All four backup solutions are automated and run daily. We go out of our way to ensure no one ever loses all their hard work.

Complete Manual Backups Using cPanel

The low-down:

• Cost: free (all required software included with your cPanel hosting plan)
• Difficulty: generally easy and straightforward
• Special requirements: none
• Automatic backups: yes, most easily done using Softaculous (I show you how in the Softaculous tutorial)

cPanel is a highly popular web hosting control panel that a majority of hosting providers offer as part of their services.

If you’ve ever managed a website with any of the most widely recognized, low-budget hosting companies like Bluehost, HostGator, iPage, GoDaddy, SiteGround, etc., then you’re likely already familiar with using cPanel.

It looks something like this:

The looks of cPanel can vary depending on the skin and styling applied by the hosting provider. Here’s a more slick example:

Regardless of appearance, the available options will more or less always be the same.

Through cPanel, you can manage your WordPress site’s files, media, and database, among many other things.

Assuming you know how to access your cPanel account, let’s get started.

cPanel Method 1: How to Backup Your WordPress Website Using phpMyAdmin and File Manager (fairly easy)

We’ll begin by backing up your site’s database. Through cPanel, we can achieve this by using phpMyAdmin, a program used to manage MySQL databases.

However, there is one important piece of information we might need, so we can identify the correct database to backup. You’ll see what I mean a little later.

Step 1: Log into your cPanel account.

To locate specific cPanel applications quickly, you can use cPanel’s jump-search field.

Alternatively, use your browser’s built-in search-this-web-page feature. To do so:

• Windows users press CTRL + F 
• Mac users press Command + F

Step 2: Go to the Files section, then find and open the File Manager application.

NOTE: On some cPanel accounts, the File Manager Directory Selection window will appear after you try to open File Manager. From here, you can choose to go straight to the public_html web root directory.

Step 3: With the File Manager controls open, look for and open a directory named public_html (some hosting providers may give this directory a different name) on the left-hand side.

In most cases, this is the “root” directory for your site as one-click WordPress installers will usually install your first site within this directory.

Step 4: Within the public_html directory, locate the wp-config.php file.

Step 5: Right-click the wp-config.php file and click view to bring up the contents of the file.

Step 6: The wp-config.php file contains very sensitive information about your website that no one but yourself and those you trust should see. This includes the database name, privileged user, and password.

What we’re specifically interested in, is the database name. In the following example, you’ll see that the database name for our demo site is foxqicom_wp245. Yours will have a different name.

Note down your database’s name and return to the cPanel dashboard.

Step 5: Go to the Databases section, then locate and click to open phpMyAdmin.

Step 6: You should now see the phpMyAdmin controls. In the left panel, you’ll see a drop-down list of databases, one unique database for each WordPress site you’ve installed.

In this example, I’ve installed two websites, so we have two databases: “foxqicom_wp92” and “foxqicom_wp245”.

So, if you have multiple databases with obscure names, you may now be going, “Uh oh, which one of the databases is the right one?” Now refer back to the database name you collected earlier from the wp-config.php file and voila, there’s your answer, it’s foxqicom_wp245. Click on the database name to load the tables on the right and click the Export tab.

Step 7: On the export page under Export Method, it’ll be set to Quick method by default. Change it to Custom to toggle more options.

Step 8: With the new options visible, scroll down to Object creation options and tick the Add DROP TABLE option.

Then scroll all the way to the bottom of the page and click the Go button.

This will trigger a MySQL database dump (backup) and creates a .sql file that is downloaded to your computer.

You may have to accept the download if it doesn’t begin automatically. How long the download takes will depend on the size of your database.

In the case of our demo site, the downloaded file is called foxqicom_wp245.sql. That’s your database backup. Keep it safe somewhere.

Step 9: Pat yourself on the back. Good job! Now we just need all your site’s files, so head back to your cPanel dashboard.

Step 10: From step 2 earlier, do you remember the File Manager application within the Files section? We’re going to use it again. And this time, our objective is to find your website’s wp-content directory and compress it into a downloadable zip file.

As mentioned before, this directory contains all your WordPress themes, plugins, and everything you’ve ever uploaded to your site (images, documents, videos, etc.) through the WordPress media library.

Step 11: Click the public_html directory again to load its contents. You should now be able to find the wp-content directory in the listed content. Click on wp-content to select it, then find and click the compress button (in this example, it’s located in the upper right-hand corner).

Step 12: In the modal window that appears, tick the Zip Archive option for compression type and click the Compress File(s) button.

When the compression process has finished, you’ll see a new modal window displaying the results.

Step 13: You should now have a wp-content.zip file inside the public_html directory. Right-click on it and click Download. The zip file will begin downloading to your computer.

Excellent work! You’ve now got both your website’s database and files ready for safekeeping and restoring.

You can now right-click and delete the wp-content.zip file from the public_html directory as it doesn’t need to stay there.

Right. So let’s say your website now suddenly took on a personality of its own and decided to crash itself. Sweet! Because, next up, I’ll show you how to restore your site.

cPanel: How to Restore Your WordPress Website with phpMyAdmin and File Manager (fairly easy)

I’ll start by showing you how to restore your database using the .sql file and phpMyAdmin.

Step 1: Log into cPanel and access phpMyAdmin within the Databases section.

Step 2: Click on the database you want to restore. In our example, it’s foxqicom_wp245.sql. Now click the Import tab.

Step 3: On the SQL import page, click Choose File and select the .sql database file you downloaded earlier.

Unless you know you’re using a specific character set (which is also shown in the wp-config.php file), leave the “Character set of the file” on the default setting (utf-8).

Click the Go button at the bottom to import your .sql file. If your database is large, the import can take a while, so don’t worry.

Once the import has completed, you’ll get a success message.

And voila. Your database has been successfully restored. You can now return to your cPanel dashboard.

Next up, you may want to restore your WordPress site’s files if you’ve lost any. We’ll do this using File Manager.

Step 4: From the cPanel dashboard, open File Manager within the Files section as usual. Click on the public_html directory to load its contents, then locate and click the Upload button.

Step: 5 On the file upload page, select and upload the wp-content.zip file from your computer. Then return to the public_html directory.

Step 6: With your wp-content.zip file uploaded, right-click and delete the current wp-content directory.

Step 7: Now right-click the wp-content.zip file and choose Extract.

Step 8: Leave the default /public_html path as we want the zip file contents extracted to that path. Click Extract File(s).

You’ll see a modal window displaying the extraction results.

Step 9: Your new wp-content directory is now ready to roll. Final step is to delete the wp-content.zip file.

cPanel Method 2: How to Backup Your WordPress Website Using Backup Application (very easy)

Now, what if I told you that most cPanel accounts feature a backup application that is perhaps a lot more convenient to use? Well, that’s ultimately for you to decide, but let me show you the solution.

In the previous tutorial, we focused on backing up the wp-content directory that sits inside the public_html root directory.

Using our demo account, the complete file path looks like this: /home/foxqicom/public_html/wp-content.

This next backup method, however, is broader in scope, because it backs up the /home directory and everything inside it. So, with this method, you’re sure to get every file you have, and you can use the same tool to easily download your site’s database.

But there is one caveat you’ll need to consider. If you have multiple websites installed on the same cPanel account, this method will backup all of them, which also means that when you restore the file, it will replace all the sites with their respective backup copies.

On top of multiple websites, you may also be using your hosting account to send and receive emails. This means:

• when you run the backup, those emails will be included
• when you then run a restore, all emails sent and received—after the backup file was created—will be erased

So if there is only a problem with one of your sites, this method will affect all other sites as well as your email account regardless.

For the speed and convenience, this method is only really perfect if you have a single website installed and do not use other services like email.

With that out of the way, let’s roll!

Step 1: Log into your cPanel account, then locate and open the Backup application within the Files section.

Step 2: On the Backup page, scroll down until you reach the Partial Backups section.

Step 3: Under “Download a Home Directory Backup,” simply click the Home Directory button to download your entire /home directory. Then click on the database link(s) under “Download a MySQL Database Backup” that you want to download.

You should now have gzip-compressed files of your /home directory and your chosen database(s) ready for safekeeping.

cPanel: How to Restore Your WordPress Website with Backup Application (very easy)

Now let’s restore the /html directory and .sql database files.

Step 1: Like Step 1 in the previous tutorial, log into your cPanel account, then locate and open the Backup application within the Files section.

Step 2: On the Backup page, scroll down to the Partial Backups section.

Under “Restore a Home Directory Backup,” click Choose File, find and select your /html directory backup file (our demo file is called backup-foxqi.com-9-14-2016.tar.gz), and click Upload.

Do the same for your .sql database backup file under “Restore a MySQL Database Backup.” (Our demo file is called foxqicom_wp245.sql.)

Depending on the size of the files, it can take a while to upload.

With each file, when you click Upload, a new browser tab should automatically open that will show the upload in progress and then give you an overview of all the directories and files that have been restored.

When you see the “Restoring files …” text and a long list of file paths, the restoration has already finished, so feel free to close the browser tab.

And here’s the one for the database upload.

There you go! You now know how to backup and restore ALL your files using the cPanel Backup application.

cPanel Method 3: How to Backup Your WordPress Website Using Softaculous (very easy)

Softaculous is essentially a library of install scripts that make installing different software easy. For example, Softaculous comes with a script that makes creating a ready-to-go WordPress site super quick.

If you’re using cPanel, chances are you were guided to install your WordPress site using Softaculous’ script.

But Softaculous also comes with backup functionality allowing you to easily backup and restore each of your sites individually.

This is a good alternative to the previous cPanel Backup application when you have more than one site or if you use your cPanel account to handle emails.

As an additional bonus, you can set individual automated backup schedules for each of your sites to be backed up once per day, week or month.

So, without further ado, let’s do this!

Step 1: Log into your cPanel account, then locate and open the Softaculous Apps Installer application within the Software section.

Step 2: In the Softaculous dashboard, locate and click the All Installations archive box icon.

Step 3: On the All Installations page, you will see a list of all sites you’ve installed using Softaculous. In the below example, there is only our demo site. Adjacent to each website, you will have four options. You can Clone, Backup, Remove, and Edit Details for the chosen site.

We’re interested in creating a backup, so click that icon.

Step 4: On the following page, you can choose whether to backup your site’s files and/or database and optionally write a note for that backup.

Once ready, click the Backup Installation button toward the bottom of the page.

You will then see your backup in progress.

Once Softaculous is finished, you will be informed by a success or failure message. If all went well, you can then click the Return to Overview link.

Done! Next, I’ll show you how you can schedule automated backups with Softaculous.

Step 5: Return to the All Installations page by clicking the archive box icon.

Step 6: Click the Edit Details pencil icon.

Step 7: On the following settings page, scroll down to the backup options. Start by selecting:

• the frequency of backups (once per day, week, or month)
• how many copies to retain before deleting the oldest backup to make room for the next one (be mindful of the amount of storage you have with your current hosting plan)
• optionally select which additional files and folders should be used for the backups (in most cases, you have no need to do this)
• if you chose any additional files and/or folders, you can choose to only backup these selections (again, in most cases you have no need to do this)

Once you’ve made your selections, scroll toward the bottom of the page and click the Save Installation Details button.

You’ll receive a confirmation message and can exit by clicking the Return to Overview link. You’re done!

Now let’s move on to restoring a Softaculous backup.

cPanel: How to Restore Your WordPress Website with Softaculous (very easy)

Previously, you learned how to backup your WordPress site using Softaculous and now I’ll show you to do a restore.

Step 1: Log into your cPanel account, then locate and open the Softaculous Apps Installer application within the Software section.

Step 2: In the Softaculous dashboard, click the Backups and Restore zip file icon.

Step 2: On the following page, you will find a list of your available backups for each website.

Adjacent to each site and it’s associated backups, are three options. You can download, restore or remove your chosen backup file.

We’re interested in doing a restore, so click the relevant icon in the middle.

Step 3: Next, you can choose whether to restore the site’s files and/or database.

Once you’ve made your choice, click Restore Installation.

You will then see the Softaculous restore-in-progress screen.

Once finished, you will be informed by a success or failure message.

And your site has been restored; good job!

Complete Manual Backups Using WordPress’ Export Tool and FileZilla FTP Client

The low-down:

• Cost: free
• Difficulty: easy to setup
• Special requirements: FileZilla FTP client and (S)FTP login details

In this tutorial, I will show you how to first backup your WordPress website’s database using WordPress’ built-in export tool, then we’ll grab the wp-content file directory using the popular FileZilla file transfer protocol (FTP) client.

Of course, we’ll wrap up with how to restore your site’s database using the WordPress Importer plugin, as well as re-uploading your wp-content directory using FileZilla.

Let me mention beforehand that, yes, you CAN complete this tutorial using cPanel instead of FileZilla.

The goal here is simply to show you how an FTP client software can work by connecting you to your hosting server. This gives you an alternative option of managing your site’s files in case your hosting provider doesn’t offer cPanel or similar control software.

And off we go!

WordPress Export Tool and FileZilla: Step-By-Step Backup to Local Computer (fairly easy)

Let’s begin exporting your WordPress database, which is super quick, using the export tool.

Step 1: Log into the admin dashboard of your site.

Step 2: Go to Tools > Export.

Step 2: From the Export page, as noted in the following image, you can download an XML file containing your:

• posts
• pages
• navigation menus
• comments
• custom fields
• custom post types
• categories
• tags

The All content option will be selected by default. But if you only want to export your posts, pages or media files, then select your preferred option. When ready, click the Download Export File button.

The download should begin shortly, and you’ll have your XML file ready for safekeeping.

Now let’s download a copy of your wp-content directory using an FTP client (FileZilla in this case).

Step 3: If you don’t have FileZilla installed, head over to the official FileZilla project website. Click the Download FileZilla Client button.

Step 4: On the download page, click Show additional download options.

Now select the correct operating system that you’re using. If you don’t know or are not sure, then just return to the previous screen and click the green