Learning how to take a back-up of your site is really important to ensure you can confidently restore your site should something go wrong while you’re working on it. Your host may provide automatic back-ups on a schedule, but these can sometimes be tricky to get hold of so it’s easier in these instances to make your own.
I always take a manual back-up of sites before I update any plugins or the WordPress core, as this means that any compatibility issues can be dealt with quickly and aren’t catastrophic. Read more on how to safely update your site.
Install Updraft
Updraft is a free plugin that you can download and install by searching for it in the Add Plugins section of the WordPress back-end. Simply install it and activate it and it’s ready to use.
Taking a back-up
Once installed and activated, you’ll find the plugin in the WordPress menu system in the left-hand column.
To take a back-up right away, click on Backup Now. You’ll get a pop-up with some options. I’d select the following:
- Include your database in the backup – check this
- Include your files in the backup – check this
- Send this backup to remote storage – check this (even if you don’t have remote storage set up, we’ll discuss this later)
- Only allow this backup to be deleted manually – leave this unchecked unless you want to keep this back-up from being automatically deleted
Then click Backup Now.
The back-up will start and depending on your site size and server speed it could take a few minutes to around 10 minutes. You can leave the page running and when it’s done you’ll see a back-up with today’s date appear underneath the Existing backups section.
Downloading the back-up
If you want to download the back-up for extra security, click on the buttons that say Database, Plugins, Themes etc. and the files will make themselves available. Click Download to your Computer and choose where you want each file to be stored.
Restoring your back-up
Restoring is super easy. Simply decide which date you want to restore and click the Restore button next to it. It’ll begin the restoration process. You’ll have the option to select which items you want restored (database, plugins, themes, etc). Best option to ensure you get a complete restoration is to check all the items on the list. It’ll then run the restoration and let you know when the restoration is successful. Click the button that says Return to UpdraftPlus configuration to return to the WordPress back-end. You might be prompted at this point to log in again so do that.
When you’ve logged back in you’ll be on the Updraft page with a paragraph at the top that says your back-up has been restored. If you check your site and verify the restoration has been successful, return to the Updraft page and click the button that says Delete old folders.
Setting up remote storage
If you use something like Dropbox or Google Drive you might want to have your back-ups uploading automatically to these services to save you having to download the files manually.
To set this up, got to the Updraft page in WordPress and click on the Settings tab. There are a ton of services to choose from so select the one that you’d like to use and follow the instructions to set up the connection.
