Backup WordPress
For most people backing something up is a tedious job, no matter how hard or easy it is or how long it takes.
You have to remember to log into your site, backup the entire site, and then download the file.
How often do you need to be backing up your site?
The easy answer to that is that you should be backing up your site as often as you update it.
How often do you update it? That is how often you should backup.
If you update daily, backup daily. If you update monthly, backup monthly.
If you’re not sure, then decide if you’re going to back up either weekly or monthly, and make sure that you always backup before and after an upgrade to your WordPress software or before making a major change to your website.
Go back and look at your blog posts and find out how often you update your site.
A common thing that happens is that people will start updating their WordPress blog on a daily, or even more frequently than daily, basis at first.
Then they’ll run out of ideas or they’ll run out of content and then die down to perhaps once per month of updating.
Make it part of your routine and maybe even after making any posts, back up your blog.
That way if the worst happens you at least have everything up until you’re more recent blog post.
Some of you might have a multi-author site or might update on an irregular basis and if that is your situation, it is recommended that you add a recurring reminder to your calendar.
Either on every Monday morning or the first of every month put an exact time where you’re supposed to log into your blog, click the backup, and save it somewhere safe.
Trust me, you’ll thank me if anything goes wrong with your WordPress blog at some point.
In addition to these weekly or monthly backups you’re making to your blog, be sure to back up your site both before and after an upgrade to WordPress itself.
It doesn’t happen often but every now and then, when you upgrade your WordPress software a few little things go wrong and if your blog is completely trashed at least you have that backup.
For example, changing the theme, changing the navigation, changing the content around, it can’t hurt to make one simple backup before anything is touched.
It is possible to break your WordPress blog. You could have changed too many things and it’s now broken.
Now you need to get back to that earlier stage when everything was working. You want and need a working website for people to view.
Before and after you upgrade and when you make a major change you backup your hat site.
In addition, make it part of your weekly or monthly routine and back up your blog more frequently if you update your blog more frequently.
Keep in mind that many of the better hosting companies perform backups and some have 30 days worth of backups that they can restore for you.
It is advisable for you to have your own backups in case something happened to the hosting company or the backup they had did not have what you really needed.
