Almost every site owner believes their site is backed up. Far fewer have ever tried restoring one. A backup only counts if it is complete, recent, stored somewhere safe and restorable when something goes wrong.
What needs to be backed up
A WordPress site has two halves, and you need both:
- The database, which holds your pages, posts, settings, users and form entries.
- The files: your uploads (images and documents), theme and plugins.
A backup of only one half will not give you a working site back.
The four questions to ask
- How often? Daily is the right default for most business sites. If you take orders or bookings, more often.
- Where is it stored? At least one copy should live somewhere other than the server your site runs on. If the server is lost or compromised, backups stored on it can be lost too.
- How far back can you go? Hacks are often discovered weeks later. Keeping several weeks of backups means you can restore to a point before the problem started.
- Has anyone tested a restore? The only way to know a backup works is to restore it somewhere, such as a staging copy, and check the site.
Backups before changes
On top of daily backups, take a fresh backup right before any change: updates, new plugins or design changes. If something goes wrong, you roll back to five minutes ago instead of last night.
On our Care Plan, daily backups and a backup before every update are included. Not sure what your current setup covers? Ask for a free health check.