How to Back Up Your WordPress Site

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Introduction

Your WordPress database contains every post, every comment and every link you have on your blog. If your database gets erased or corrupted, you stand to lose everything you have written. There are many reasons why this could happen, and not all are things you can control. With a proper backup of your WordPress database and files, you can quickly restore things back to normal

Prerequisites

an active KVM VPS
DirectAdmin control panel

Why Are WordPress Backups Important?

Although WordPress is highly secure, this doesn’t mean your site is immune from issues that may cause you to lose content. A WordPress backup is one of those things you’ll be glad you have, but hope you never need.

Backing up your site’s files and database is like creating an insurance policy. It’s something you can cash in as and when you need it. Whether the problem is due to a hack, attack, coding blunder, or something else out of your control, having key elements backed up means you can get your site back online quickly.

Backing up files can also save you time and eliminate frustration. For example, if you make an error while working on your site and can’t find the cause, you can simply restore a recently backed-up version. As such, it’s important to back up your site regularly, using one of the following three methods.

1. Backup your website/account in DirectAdmin

Select the items you want to include in the backup (like website, database etc.) -> Click on Create Backup

Once done, you can click on “File Manager” and you will also see the backup archive in the /backups/ directory of your domain

Right click and choose Download

2. Using WordPress Backup Plugins

Plugins that have back up function for WordPress will create backups automatically. This presents the most simple way for beginners, as you need only a few click to make it done.

Here are several plugins:

BackWPup

With more than 700.000 times installed, this BackWPup plugin supports you in creating scheduled backups, repairing, optimizing your database and restoring it just with one click. On top of that, it is totally free of charge.

BackupBuddy

This is a paid plugin that provides you with nearly all most advanced backup features for data backups. All the operations are very easy to follow such as backup schedules or backing up to cloud services like Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3, etc.

UpdraftPlus

UpdraftPlus is a free plugin with over a million of downloads and widely used in the WordPress community. You may use it to back up and restore the whole website quickly and easily. It allows you to back up to Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3, Rackspace Cloud, DreamObjects, FTP, Openstack Swift, Updraft Vault and email. There is also a paid version supporting backups to Microsoft OneDrive, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Storage, Backblaze B2, SFTP, SCP and WebDAV as well.

VaultPress

Another popular free plugin from the Automattic developers of WordPress, supporting real-time backup solution of posts, comments, system settings, etc. With Vaultpress, you are also protected from hackers, malware and damage from unforseen situations and server problems.