Why Are Backups So Important for Your WordPress Site?

Let’s say you update your core WordPress themes and plugins frequently, install only trusted themes and plugins, use security software and reliable hosting. That is undoubtedly good, but is that really enough? The answer is NO.

As security practices are very effective, your data can still be vulnerable. It’s important to always remember that they don’t guarantee 100% security. When your WordPress site is down either due to malware or error, the first thing you need to do is to restore your website as soon as possible to minimize the downtime. This is where a proper data backup comes into play.

This article focuses on the types of WordPress backups, their importance, and the features that a WordPress backup plugin should have.

Reasons Why WordPress Backups Are So Important

Backup is your second line of defence against cyber attacks. Along with backups, you should follow Ten essential steps to protect your WordPress site.

Let’s take an example of a spare tire. Every car has a spare tire, even if you haven’t used it yet, but it allows you to drive without fear. We can think of a website backup the same way.

It’s essential to have backups and Best WordPress Security Plugins and Services to Protect Your Site, as these tools are beneficial for WordPress security.

Five Main Reasons WordPress Backups Are Essential

Website Is Hacked

Data suggest that WordPress sites face 3.5 billion attack attempts a day due to global popularity and market share.

Most of the WordPress sites that are being hacked have outdated versions of WordPress core, themes and plugins. Not only that, but smart hackers can also find a way around security tools like Firewall and can infect, modify or delete WordPress Sites and their data. In such cases, WordPress backups are very effective in restoring the website.

Server Goes Down

No matter what hosting platform you use, no one can guarantee 100% server uptime. You can lose your website data when a server goes down or crashes. There can be many reasons for the server outage, such as malware attacks, software configuration issues, power outages, disk failures, etc. Here an independent backup solution can help to restore your website.

Website is Broken

While WordPress is the most secure and reliable platform, websites can still crash due to human error or incorrect practices. Some of the common reasons for broken WordPress sites are:

• Compatibility issue.
• Low-quality themes and plugins.
• Installing themes and plugins from untrusted resources.
• Incorrect coding or customizations.

Therefore, it’s recommended to have a complete backup before any update.

Human Error

A minor human error can be the reason for a website’s crash. Accidentally deleting important files is one of the common errors known to crash websites.

Another common error is when a website owner forgets to renew their website on time. After a specific time, the hosting company can suspend the website. Hence, backups are known as the best guard against human errors.

Natural Disaster

WordPress sites are vulnerable to natural disasters like floods and earthquakes despite the best measures. Apart from natural disasters, data centres can be affected by a building crash, fire or human error, resulting in significant data loss. In this case, off-site backups are very effective to restore your data.

Now that you have understood the importance of backups, it’s also essential to understand the risks and strategies of backup by looking into Protect your business with daily, automated backups.

Types of WordPress Backups

Let’s evaluate each type of WordPress backup available in the market:

Managed Backups From Hosting Provider

Many hosting providers include backups in their hosting plans. If you choose Managed WordPress Dubai, you will be facilitated with automatic daily backups where you don’t need to perform backups yourself or worry about losing your data.

Manual Backups

You can backup your website manually if you have the technical know-how and expertise. You can use FTP tools like Filezilla or PHPMyAdmin tool for WordPress files and records.

Manual backups are a time-consuming process. It can also require you to troubleshoot or resolve any problem that may arise during backup.

Automated Backups

You can automate the backup process by using any plugin. It is the fastest and most convenient way to perform backups. Many WordPress backup plugins are available that are easy to install and use.

It’s beneficial for those who don’t have any technical skills or don’t want to depend on their hosting provider.

Important Features That Every WordPress Backup Plugin Should Have

A complete backup solution should backup your WordPress files and database records. So, If you choose automated backups, the following are the features that every backup plugin possess.

Off-Site Storage

Plugins that store the backup on client servers have the disadvantage of reducing the storage and exposing backup to external threats.

So backups should be saved independently and in different locations to be unaffected by any server-side incident.

Incremental Backups

Incremental backups are very useful to save additional disk space. It broke your data into chunks and synced it into the existing backup. It doesn’t sync the entire website after the first backup; only incremental changes are synced.

This feature prevents overloading of your web server and can effectively be used for large websites.

Multiple Backups

Backup plugins should provide multiple backup versions stored in numerous locations for maximum safety. Backup tools should provide their servers like Google Drive or dropbox from where any backup version can be downloaded and restored.

Easy Restore

Backup plugins must provide a convenient and reliable way of restoring backups to WordPress sites. If the backup restore process is not quickly, it defeats the purpose of performing backups in the first place.

Backup Testing

Like other files, backup files can also get corrupted, and if you restore a damaged backup to your live WordPress site, it can create more complications. Therefore, it’s better to test your backup to see if it’s safe to restore or not.

The plugin Blogvault can do this work for you.

Scheduled and On-Demand Backups

A scheduled backup is an automated backup with options to schedule backup at fixed intervals like daily, weekly or monthly, depending on your website needs.

Also, backup plugins should provide on-demand backups that can execute at any time.

Website Staging

Website staging is a feature that creates a clone of your website and lets you test your changes before applying it to your live website. Because applying new changes directly to your live website can be risky, sometimes it could crash your website.

Some backup plugins have this feature built-in. And you can also create a staging site with AEserver managed hosting plan.

Website Migration

Migrating a website to another host or web domain can be a complicated task, and it’s essential to take a backup of all your files before migrating.

Some backup plugins let you migrate your WordPress website to another host very smoothly. In addition, AEserver offers a free site migration with a managed WordPress hosting plan.

Real-time Backups for Woocommerce

Unlike any other business website, Woocommerce sites need a regular and real-time backup executed every time a transaction is made because Woocommerce sites cannot afford any downtime or even loss of a single customer order.

User-friendly Experience

As manual backups require technical expertise, backup plugins should be made user-friendly so that a beginner can perform a complete backup and restore.

Backup plugins should pose an independent dashboard where a user can perform tasks independently without any technical assistance and can easily access backups when the webserver or website is down.

The Bottom Line

Implementing the proper security measures and a well backup strategy is crucial to your WP website.

You can identify the best approach to build a WordPress backup strategy by going through the risks, types and backup plugin features mentioned above. And if you choose AEserver’s UAE hosting solution, your half work will be already done.

We highly recommend analyzing your website needs and making website backup a big part of website maintenance.