Why Website Backup & How Is It Important

What Actually Is A Website Backup?

A backup of a website is known as the copy of all the information on your website. What is included in the backup storage is completely up to you (core files, theme, plugin, uploads, configuration files, database etc.), it is said that the more data in the data backup, the better.

 

Backing up your website is especially important if your website runs on content management system (CMS) like WordPress and Wix, where you might need all of your site files, media, content and databases to get it up and make it running again.

Make Your Website Invulnerable by Backing Up Regularly

You can always keep your website safe with many ways, from choosing a top-notch web hosting service provider to using a strong password for your website. However, the most important and crucial step you can take to secure your website is to carry out regular backup for your site.

Why You Need To Backup Your Website Regularly

Let’s dive in and see why you need to backup your website regularly and how does It help on strengthening your website security:

 

  1. Avoid Human Error

Everyone makes mistakes. There are times when you mistakenly deleted your website file or make changes that break some of its functionality.

 

By performing regular website backup, you’ll get your ways of fixing these issues. There are a few methods of restoring a previous version of your site.

  • Identify the cause of issue and look for ways to resolve it
  • Restore your website’s latest backup and move on

 

Performing website backup regular can save you in situation where you and/or your website admin makes a mistake on your website.

 

  1. Prevent Loss Of Data

Imagine if you have a library of content in your site and someone in your team mistakenly delete the entire of them. One of the primary reason to backup your website is to ensure that your data will be safe.

Besides, loss of data can be occurred even if there’s no human error involved. Hence, performing website backup regularly is more than essential, even if you know what exactly you’re doing and what’s going on in your site.

 

Another way to prevent data loss is avoid keeping your backup file in the same location. It’s always better to have multiple backup files and upload those files to the cloud instead.

 

  1. Resolve The Infections of Malware

There are always misunderstanding that malware can only affect personal computer. In fact, malware can also affect websites as well, and a lot websites are vulnerable to malware.

 

Troubleshooting and resolve the issue of malware can be troublesome and tricky because it’s difficult for you to know whether your site if fully-clean. And, the problem of malware will still exist if you don’t identify and fix the security hole that led to the invasion.

 

Performing regular backups will help you get your website cleaned in a faster and efficient speed.

 

  1. Hacker Repellent

There are times when hackers make their attempt to hack into your site and steal the important information in it. If someone manage to breach your site account with administrative privilege, you’ll be exposed to the threat of being lock from entering your site.

 

This wouldn’t happen if you take precautionary actions. Hence, it’s always important to have 2-factors authentication (2FA) featured and enabled on your site. In case of getting hack, here are the 2 ways you can use:

  • Try to recover access to your website administrative account through your e-mail.
  • Restore the latest backup version from your hosting panel.

 

Restoring the latest backup version helps you to regain the control of your website in a quicker way. With this way, you can update your website security and change the access information to ensure that the hackers are locked out since then.

 

  1. Make Process of Migrating Web Hosts Easier

Many would make the mistake of choosing the wrong web hosting service provider, resulting in the need of switching web hosts.

 

Changing your web hosting service might be troublesome and there’s a high possibility of leading to a big mess and loss of files. It is because the process of migrating from one web host to another involves migrating all your site’s file from one server to another and you’ll never know what will happen in the process.

 

However, if you perform regular backups for your site, you’ll have multiple full copies of your website. With those copies, you can simply ask your new hosting service provider to migrate your site for you or migrate manually by your own with the use of dedicated tools.

 

Having a backup copies enables you to switch web hosts whenever you feel needed, which gives you lots of freedom.

How Often Should You Backup Your Website?

When determining how often should you backup your website, you should always put the frequency of your website content updates and/or changes into consideration. It is always wise to backup once every update/change is made.

 

For example, if you only update once per week, then you should backup your website once per week. However, if you’re adding new contents or make changes in a daily basis instead, you should also perform backup for your website daily.

 

If there’s no special occasion, still, we recommend you to backup your website for at least once per month. Imagine how time-consuming it would be to repost or rewrite your website contents (blog, articles, product/service description etc.) just because you didn’t perform regular backup for your website.

How To Perform cPanel Backups Using Backup

cPanel comes with an extensive range of built in backup tools. Below, we cover how to use cPanel to backup and restore your website files on your cPanel account.

Step 1: Type your-website-domain.com/cpanel in domain address bar and login to your cPanel account

Step 2: Click the Backup Wizard button in the Files section of cPanel
Step 3: Click on the blue button labelled Backup
Step 4: Choose the types of backup you wish to make: Select a Full Backup or Partial Backup. Partial Backup allow you to download smaller files. Home Directory create a backup consisting of everything in the website root directory, while MySQL Databases option only backup the website databases and Email Forwarders & Filters only allow you to save email data.
Step 5: Choose the destination of the backup files. Click the drop down arrow and choose either Secure Copy (SCP), Home Directory, Remote FTP Server, or Remote FTP Server (passive mode transfer). By default and recommended is Home Directory.
Step 6: Enter email address to receive notification of the completion of backup progress. If notification is not needed, then click the Radio Button instead.
Step 7: Click on Generate Backup button
Step 8: You’ll receive a link that says Backup Available for Download once the backup progress complete. Click the link to download the backup files. You can also check whether if there’s a tick besides the line of backup zip.
Another Way of Using cPanel to Backup Your Site
Step 1: Type your-website-domain.com/cpanel in domain address bar and login to your cPanel account
Step 2: Click the File Manager button in the Files section of cPanel.
Step 3: Look for Public HTML directory, Right Click, then Compress and Download the Compressed File.
Step 4: Look for the Compressed Backup File (In Zip. Format) after the download progress.
Step 5: Successfully Backup

How to Perform WordPress Backup

The easiest and quickest way to back up your website is by using a WordPress backup plugin. Below, we provide guidance on how to install WordPress plugin to backup and restore your website files.
Step 1: Type your-website-domain.com/wp-admin/ in domain address bar and login to your website account on WordPress.
Step 2: Go to WordPress Dashboard and look for Plugins > Add New
Step 3: Select the plugin you want and install the plugin. After it has been installed, click the Activate button and you can now start backing up your WordPress website.

Step 4: Upon activation, click on the backup plugin appeared at the left side bar.

Step 5: Follow the plugin step to finish the backup. Note that different plugin comes with different steps.

Let’s Wrap It Up and Always Be Prepared.

When it comes to digital security, ‘regular website backup’ is the most often heard piece of advice from most of the web developers and web agencies. Having a regular backup for your site allows you to have a quick fix if anything goes wrong on your site.

 

Besides, having your website backup regularly can save you a lot of mess if you have to perform troubleshooting activities or recover the loss data in your site.

 

Facing the issues of web hosting and feel like switching to a more reliable web hosting server? Or still not sure how to perform backup for your website?

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