If you are a blogger then you might be aware of the importance of taking WordPress database backup regularly. Not only database backup, you must also take backup of other files like images and videos of your blog once in a while. This is very essential for every blogger as you may get hacked someday or lose your data for some other reasons.
It is always recommended to take regular backups of your blog to be secure and safer. Recently my blog got hacked and if I had not the backup with me then it could be really difficult for me to recover my blog.
Most of the people will recommend you to take backup of your database only but from my recent blog hack I have learnt that we should also take backup of our blog files at least twice in a month.
When should you perform the backup
Data can be lost any time without any notification. There can be many reasons for data loss. A hacker can hack your blog, your server can crash, natural disasters etc. If you are totally dependent on your blog for making money then it becomes more important task for you. You should perform backup of your blog according to following schedule:
Database backup: Daily (1 or 2 times)
Files backup: Weekly (or twice in a month)
How to Backup WordPress Database Manually
It is always good to learn manual ways to do things. In case automatic method fails, you can do the things manually. In the following few steps you can take WordPress database backup very easily.
- Sign in to your cPanel and open phpMyAdmin.
- Now select the database associated with your WordPress blog.
- Once you selected your database, click on Export tab on the top.
- Now chose the preferred mode of compression – None, zipped or gzipped and press Go button to take backup. Preferred mode of compression is gzipped.
- That’s all to take database backup.
How to Backup WordPress Database Automatically
You have already learnt how to backup WordPress database manually. Now you will learn how to automate this process. WP-DB-Backup is a WordPress plugin that does this task for you automatically. You can chose prefered schedule to take backup once daily, twice daily, once hourly or once weekly. I highly recommend you to install this plugin.
How to Backup WordPress Files
To take backup of blog files, follow the following steps:
- Login to your FTP.
- Go to public_html directory and download wp-content folder to your computer. All of your blog related files that you have uploaded like images, video, themes and plugins are present in wp-content folder only.
- That’s all to take backup of your files.
This is the simple tutorial to take backup of WordPress database and files. I hope you like this tutorial. If you ever lost your blog data, we would love to know about your experience to recover your blog.
Backing up your files is really essential, I hope you are the one who understands its importance to the maximum! But I really feel lazy to do this everyday! I hope the Hosting company keeps an automated back up of files as well as database for all sites hosted with them!
It is better to keep a backup of the data in our hands or everything could be lost in a split of a second!
Good article. This should really help the newbie bloggers.
You are right Bimal. We must always have backup of our blog online or offline. Data could be lost anytime. Our blogs are a result of our hard work and it really pain when we lose it.
Great information about backing up database. 🙂
I use WP DB Plugin and it is pretty good for taking backups. Also it is much easier through this plugin when compared to manual backup 😉
Simran any possible best way to take free backup of public_html folder or wp-content folder?
i use a plugin wordpress backup which will attach the backup file and send to my email…
very useful tips on database backup. It is very important for everyone to backup at a regular basis
Thanks for the article…Everyone should need to backup their database…I lost my website once for not talking a backup due to some misconfigurations
Thanks a lot for these tips. I have been in the condition several times where i lost all my data.. Thanks for telling me a way. Nice article. Keep it up. 🙂