It’s no surprise that you’re looking for information about running a WordPress website. After all, 42.9% of all websites on the internet use WordPress to run. It’s quick and easy to set up a WordPress site and publish content to people.
However, best practices for WordPress aren’t always obvious, and backups are one of those things that often get overlooked.
You never know when you’ll experience a problem that will bring your site offline, so it pays to backup a WordPress site. Keep reading to learn why a website backup is important and how you can make it happen.
Why Should You Backup a WordPress Site
Even though it isn’t too hard to backup your WordPress site, some web admins still don’t see why it’s crucial. Below are a few things that can happen that will require a restoration from a website backup.
Website Malware
WordPress is generally secure, but that doesn’t mean new issues aren’t regularly discovered. On top of that, you’re at more risk when you run a lot of plugins and custom themes.
Hackers can exploit unmaintained files to install malware on your WordPress site. A backup will help with protecting your WordPress site by letting you restore to a previous version to remove the malware.
Upgrade Problems
Not all WordPress updates play nice with each other. If you have themes and plugins from different developers, things can conflict during updates and crash your site.
If you’re in this situation, you’ll need to restore from a backup to get things working again. From there, you can wait until a new update gets released that fixes the problem.
Human Error
Even if you’re generally careful with your websites, you can still make mistakes. While some of those mistakes aren’t a big deal, others will cause severe issues and slow down or crash your site.
A backup will help you quickly revert to a previous website version. You can then start making new changes that don’t cause website problems.
Server Problems
Even if you have a secure website setup, you can still experience server issues that bring your site down. Your site will be offline until the server gets fixed if this happens.
You can restore a backup on another server as a stopgap when this happens. You can keep things there until your server returns and switch your domain name back to your original hosting.
How to Perform a WordPress Website Backup
Now that you see how vital a website backup is, you need to know how to get it done. Luckily, that isn’t hard with WordPress.
Plugins like Updraft allow you to automate the process. You can write your backups to disk or send them to a cloud hosting provider.
Some website hosts also offer backups for free. You can set a schedule in your control panel and run it automatically.
Of course, you can also do this yourself. You can download your website files and database from your website host.
Don’t Wait to Setup Your WordPress Backup
You can’t afford for your website to go down when you need it most. Unfortunately, you never know when you’ll experience problems that cause your site to crash. Create a plan to backup a WordPress site today to ensure you never run into issues and can restore your site after a problem.
Are you interested in more website development tips that will help you maintain your site and create a great experience? Learn more website tips by heading back to the blog.
