Knowledgebase

Importance of backing up 

WordPress is a very powerful website builder that features both back & front end functionality in what is called a CMS. Many different CMS type website builders exist but WordPress is without doubt the most popular. 

If you’re operating your business through a WordPress website it's important to have minimal downtime. 

Downtime can severely impact a customer's opinion of your business, keeping either scheduled backups or manual backups of your site is one way to secure against such contingencies. 

This ensures that your customers continue to have a positive user experience on your site and thus consider your organisation to be professional. 
There are many reasons to deploy a backup of your site, the main being: user error (accidental deletion) or an issue with a plugin or theme. 

Because of its popularity WordPress also comes under lots of pressure from bad actors such as hackers, spammers, scammers, etc.

To help protect users of WordPress the WordPress foundation releases regular updates, ensuring any security holes are patched. 
If an update is neglected, the site may fall victim to attackers. Using a backup, it can be easily restored to before the attack. 

Backups can be deployed in 3 different ways. 

• Through a WordPress plugin such as Updraft or Jetpack backup (Features may be locked behind a premium version).

As a hosting company we take backups seriously which is why we run automatic daily backups for all of our shared services up to a 14-day period.  These backup archives can be used for both files and databases. It’s important to note that whilst this service exists you should not rely on it, as we will not be held responsible if a requested backup isn’t available. 

• Manually 

WordPress uses a theme, plugins to determine how a site looks and its functionality. Actual content is stored in the backend or database. So to manually backup a WordPress site both the WordPress files and WordPress database must be restored. This can be done through use of a FTP client and phpMyAdmin within your cPanel or Plesk Control panel. 

Manual Backup 

cPanel

1. Using your FTP client, connect to your site. [Connection details can be found in your welcome email]
2. Select all of the files within your sites directory. [If you have a multi-site cPanel, ensure you have the correct files]
3. Create a folder on your desktop. [This will be used to store the files]
4. Drag the selected files into the folder on your desktop. [This may take a while, depending on the size of your site]
5. Duplicate file warning. Select overwrite, tick “Always use this action”, tick “Apply to current queue only” Click ok.
6. Once download is completed, open the folder and navigate to the “wp-config.php” file. 
7. This file provides you with information on the adjoined database for the next step. 
8. Login to your cPanel control panel.
9. In the “Databases” section click “phpMyAdmin”
10. Using the database name, select the database your site is using. 
11. Using the control bar, click “Export then “Go”.
12. On the left, select the database that your WordPress site is using.
13. Click export, then click go.
14. In the file explorer window, select your folder and click save.