Nobody thinks about backups until the day they need one. Your site gets hacked, an update breaks your theme, or you delete the wrong thing at midnight. If you have a recent backup, it’s a bad afternoon. If you don’t, it can be years of posts gone.
We saw this with the recent PHP2Shell security flaws, where even fully updated WordPress sites were at risk because of the server underneath them. Updates are important, but a good backup is what saves you when something gets through anyway.
Why we don’t recommend a backup plugin
The obvious answer seems to be installing a backup plugin. It’s what most guides suggest, but we think there’s a better option for most bloggers. Plugins have a few problems:
- They live on the same server as your site. If your site is compromised, the plugin and often the backups it stored are too.
- They’re another thing to keep updated. Every plugin adds code that can have its own security holes.
- They slow things down. Backing up a big site uses a lot of your server’s resources, and on cheap hosting that can make your site crawl while it runs.
- They fail quietly. A storage connection expires or a backup times out, and you only find out when you go to restore it.
Let your host do it instead
A good WordPress host backs up your whole site automatically at the server level, outside of WordPress itself. There’s nothing to install or configure, the backups are kept seperate from your live site, and restoring is usually a couple of clicks in your hosting account.
Bluehost is one example of a WordPress host that offers automated backups, so it’s a sensible place to start if your current host doesn’t. Whoever you go with, check exactly what’s included before you sign up: how often backups run, how long they’re kept and whether restoring costs extra. Those details vary a lot between plans.
Three habits worth keeping
Keep your own copy now and then. Host backups are great, but it’s definately worth downloading a full copy every few months and storing it somewhere else, like cloud storage or an external drive. If you ever lose access to your hosting account, you’ll still have your site.
Test a restore. A backup you’ve never restored is a guess. Many hosts let you restore to a staging site, so you can check it works without touching your live blog. The official WordPress backup guide is also worth a read if you want to understand what a full backup should include.
Back up before big changes. Before switching theme, changing PHP version or doing a major update, take a manual backup first. It takes a minute and gives you an easy way back if things go wrong.
Ten minutes checking your host’s backup settings today is a lot less painful than than trying to rebuild your blog from memory later.
WordPress Theme: Lavoie
