Website back up tutorial

How to Back Up Your Website

This step by step guide will help you back up your website in a few minutes.

Keeping a website back up helps to prevent a catastrophe incase of server failure, a hacked website, or accidentally deleted files as with a backup, you can restore your website to its normal state, to a time before disaster struck.

Businesses should be especially keen on backing up their websites; after all, you don’t want to lose precious orders or inventory data due to an unfortunate happening. That’s money lost.

Fortunately, creating a proper backup is a relatively simple endeavor. It’s just a matter of deciding how you’re going to do it, and how often. Once the process is done, you’ll need to keep your backup in a safe place, such as an external hard drive or cloud storage, and refresh it on a regular basis. 

Ready to learn how to back up your website? Read on.



FileZilla is one of the more technical ways to backup your site

Back Up Your Website Using FileZilla

The standard way to back up your website is also the method that requires the most know-how. Manually backing up your website requires using FTP software to move the files to your local computer. We recommend using FileZilla.

How to back up website using FileZilla

  1. Fill in the Host, Username, and Password fields. Host is your site’s domain name or IP address, while username and password are the credentials used to access your site’s control panel.
  2. Click “Quick connect.” Once you do, you’ll see a set of folders that represents your website in FileZilla’s bottom-right area.
  3. Navigate to the “public html” folder. Right-click it to open a contextual menu.
  4. Select “Download” to copy the public html folder to your PC. 
  5. Alternatively, if you’re using a WordPress-powered site, download the wp-content directory and the wp-config.php file. 

Your backup’s complete! Now, save that file to a thumb drive, encrypt the data, or upload it to the cloud.

The problem with this manual method is that it’s…manual. You’ll need to retrace these steps whenever you want to make a backup. Plus, it’s not the most simple operation, which may be a problem depending on your technical knowledge. Fortunately, there are simpler ways to back up your site.



The standard, modern cPanel

Back Up Your Website Using cPanel

Many web hosting services use cPanel, a user-friendly, control panel frontend with many push-button options. As you may have surmised, it also lets you back up your website. cPanel backups are technically manual backups, but they’re easier to perform than using the above method.

How to back up your website using cPanel

  1. Log into your site’s cPanel control panel.
  2. Enter the “Files” section and click “Backup.”
  3. Click “Download a Full Website Backup.” There are also options to do partial backups that include just home directory or SQL databases. This is particularly useful, as it shortens the download times associated with large website or database backups.
  4. Select “Home Directory” as your backup destination, and then enter an email address so you can receive a notification when the backup is done.
  5. Click “Generate Backup” to start the backup process.
  6. Click “Go Back.” You’ll see a link that displays “Backups Available For Download.” From here, you can download the backup archive file. 
  7. WordPress-backed websites require an extra step. In the “Databases” section, click “phpMyAdmin” and then select your site’s database. Click “Export.” Finally, on the next page, click “Go” to download the SQL file. 


A look at the UpdraftPlus plug-in

Back Up Your WordPress Site Using a Plug-In

Have a WordPress-powered website? You can use a number of WordPress plug-ins to backup your website like Updraft Plus.

How to use Updraft plus Plugin to back up your website

  1. Install Updraft Plus, and activate it.
  2. Go to “Settings” and click the Updraft Plus tab.
  3. Click “Backup Now” to create a downloadable, archive file.

Updraft Plus has other features that enhance the backup experience. You can use the plug-in to back up your site on a set schedule, removing the manual back up hassle. You can also link Updraft Plus to a cloud storage account, so that your backup files will be automatically sent there.

Updraft Plus makes the entire backup process wonderfully simple.



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