Be safe, not sorry. Don’t get caught with your pants down.
Creating a backup of your own WordPress Blog is among those responsibilities that many people remarkably disregard and simply plain dismiss because they do not feel it is important or that they do not have the time to do.
Don’t risk it. One day you will get hit or hacked and if you have NO backup, then all of the time and effort you had put in will be wiped out and you will have lost everything.
Do not assume that nothing terrible will happen to all of the work that you have labored so faithfully to post and put up on your website or blog.
This really happened to me!
In 2014, I got hacked 2 times in 4 days. After the first time, the hosting company was able to restore my blogs from their backups, so everything was good.
The second time I got hacked, 4 days later, the hosting company told me they had NO backups. So in 2 days, their backups no longer existed. Needless to say, I will never use that hosting company again. They SUCK.
With technology today, most people think that their website hosting services are so sophisticated that backups will get made and that the hosting company will take care of it.
Don’t bet on it.
If the hosting company does not do backups on a regular basis, then you are SOL (Shit Out of Luck), if you get HACKED.
You have without a doubt figured out the challenge of ‘why should you blog’, so do not lose all the hard work that you have put into it!
This not implying that there are not many high-quality web hosting companies that will manage website backups for their customers.
But suppose something occurred when they were doing their backups? You’re in big trouble, pure and simple.
And once your blog data is gone, it is gone. Without a backup of some type, your blog and all of the time and effort are lost.
It is very easy to back up your WordPress blog. And you can create backups of your blog without spending any money on a WordPress plugin.
I’m going to highly recommend the plug-in which I use on my WordPress blogs.
I just want to share with you what I use mainly because I like it the best. But of course, it is your decision.
Duplicator
Is a fantastic plugin developed by https://snapcreek.com/
It makes a data backup of your database, WordPress tables, folders, and all files.
The plug-in is not hard to use.
You can download it here at this link: https://snapcreek.com/
You can either use your FTP software program to upload it in your WordPress Plugin directory or install and activate it through your wp-admin.
I have been using this plugin since before my blogs got hacked and because I had backups of each blog that had been created with Duplicator.
I was able to recover all 100 of my blogs, but it took several days, but at least I got all of my blogs back up and functioning.
You can actually install plug-in right from your WordPress admin page.
Simply log in to your WordPress site, and then click the Plugins link on the left sidebar and then click on the add new link around the top of the page.
Then type in Duplicator and it should be the 1st result. If not, it’ll be near the top.
Then click install and go set up the plugin.
Do Not ignore this key step.
You actually must make a backup of your website! Trust me, people forget to perform this step!
Do backups on a regular basis and always save the files.
The plugin will notify you once it’s finished.
Always retain a few backups of your blog.
Keep five backups just to be safe. It is better to be safe than sorry – correct?
You can now relax knowing that your blog’s information is protected in case of a disaster and your web hosting company comes crashing down or your blog(s) get hacked and your hosting company has NO backups of your hard work.
The Duplicator plugin has 3 main functions:
1. Backup your WordPress blog
2. Restore your blog to an earlier date
3. Clone an existing blog into a new blog and save hours of time