What Are Website Backups and Why Are They Important ?

Website Backups

Backup seems to be a buzzword. We keep hearing it everywhere, especially on tech blogs and WordPress forums, but only a few actually know what it means. Moreover, those who know what backups are, don’t really take it seriously or don’t even bother doing backups. If you’re new to WordPress, or simply want to learn more about website backups, this post is all about finding out what backups are and why they are important. As a tip, we’ll go through some of the backup solutions available for WordPress powered websites, and you can choose whichever fits your site the best.

What is a backup?

In simple terms, backup is the process of making a duplicate of the most important data of your website and saving it in another place to restore it in the future if needed. A full backup of your website includes all your website code files and databases, images, and all the plugins, theme files and add-ons you have installed on your website. Basically, WordPress backups allow you to restore your website to a point when everything was fine. It’s like a safety measure to take if anytime something goes wrong.

Why should you do regular backups?

The short answer to this question is simply not to lose important files and to be on the safe side. But how do we risk losing website files? Well, in the world of the web there are various reasons your website might be at risk. First, accidents happen. You or someone else might accidentally delete some of the important files of your website and don’t even notice it, or notice it later when the files are gone. Relying on the hosting provider is not the safest option in this case.

There are tons of viruses and malware around that can as well damage your website and cause you a bunch of problems. No ones insured from website hackings and neither are you. We all know WordPress is an open source platform and this is where hackers take advantage of system vulnerabilities and might cause you and your website a considerable harm. Even if you save a copy of your files and database on your computer this might come with risks too. Computers malfunction and crash sometimes and might ruin the efforts you have put on your website in just seconds.

You know, updates go wrong too and might damage your files and your website at the moment you expected it the least. And this is possibly not the complete list of the reasons how your website files and database can be at risk or can get damaged. So if you don’t want to wake up one day and find out your website got hacked or due to a wrong update your files have been damaged, backups are the best solution to make sure your website and all your work you put in are safe.

Backup solutions

As the risk of malware, attacks and malfunctions rise, so does the number of solutions against those. There are many ways you can backup your website files and database if you’re running a WordPress website. First, you can manually backup your files and database, although this is a pretty technical process and you’ll need to know a basic understanding of how WordPress works. There are a lot of detailed articles and posts on how to manually backup WordPress. Check them out if this is the option you want to go with.

Another solution you can choose is to rely on your hosting’s built-in backup service. Most of the hosting companies also provide backup solutions which are probably included in your hosting plan. If that’s a managed WordPress host then it works with WordPress on the server level, and their service is probably more reliable. Otherwise, you need to be careful with built-in backups, since they might not be regular or the time lapses between the backups might be too long.
One other option you can go with is 10Web’s backup solution. Actually, 10Web is an all-in-one WordPress solution, so if you’re new to WordPress this is probably a good option for you. For as little as $12 per month, you will get a bundle of 60 premium must-have WordPress plugins, 6 premium WordPress themes, backup service, image optimizing solution, SEO tools, and analytics. Its backup solution supports differential backups, which stores only the data that has been changed since the last full backup.

These backups are quicker and save you storage space. You can have daily, weekly and monthly backups and choose to backup in a number of formats and external locations, like Dropbox and GDrive. Backups are super easy to restore. With 10Web’s backup service you’ll get a defined amount of storage depending on the membership plan that you’ll get.
The last option that you can choose, is, of course, a dedicated WordPress backup plugin. There are plenty of them in the WordPress repository, ranging from free to paid ones. You just need to make a thorough research to see which of those provide the services and features that your website needs. I am sure there is one for every budget.

Backups are important and you should take it more seriously. As you can see there is a bunch of backup solutions out there for everyone to keep their website files and data safe. If your website still doesn’t get regularly backed up, I hope this post will help you find the right solution for it.

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