How to Back Up a WordPress Site for Free With UpdraftPlus

If you don’t focus on WordPress backup, you’re going to face some serious issues. 

Having a strong website backup can prove beneficial in many ways that we’ll discuss below. 

For a WordPress website in particular, there are plenty of options for creating backups. Some are paid while some are free. In our quest to find that “one” WordPress backup plugin, we found UpdraftPlus. 

One of the best plugins for creating backups, it comes in both Free and Paid versions. But the thing that makes it stand out is its services in free mode. 

From manual to automatic backups and more, UpdraftPlus simplifies the WordPress backup process. 

This tutorial will show you how to back up your WordPress site using the UpdraftPlus plugin. Moreover, we’ll also show you the importance of backing up your WordPress site.

So, let’s start with the post. 

What Does ‘Backup’ Mean?

A ‘backup’ is simply a copy of your website stored in some digital location.

It’s a process through which you download your website files, and store them in a safe place. It could be on Google Drive (aka The Cloud) or on your local hard drive. 

If your website files ever get compromised, damaged, or infected with some sort of virus, you can revert it to a previous version through the backup. 

For a WordPress site, it’s very essential since it can make a copy of your WordPress database. It also stores all your posts, comments, themes, and plugins. 

Why Do You Need to Back Up Your WordPress Site?

As we’ve already discussed, backups are crucial in WordPress website management and for a good reason. 

Building up a WordPress website is hard work, and once you’re all set and gaining some returns you want to manage it so in the event something goes wrong, you don’t lose it all. 

What if something doesn’t go wrong?

It’s not wise to think that it’ll all be smooth sailing. Problems with websites are all too common and you should treat it as something inevitable. 

If you choose to ignore these WordPress backups there are plenty of things that can go wrong. 

Update Problems

WordPress updates are very useful since they help promote security. 

For lack of a better word, the platform is famous for needing regular updates to stay secure and safe from external threats. WordPress websites are quite prone to getting hacked. 

The normal WordPress update process is normal. But there are some cases when the updates go wrong. Even if the process went well, the new update might cause unintended consequences for the website. The site’s UI might change or the new update might be incompatible to the current web flow.

To avoid a scenario like that, you should keep a backup of your website before the updating process. You could lose serious functionality with this. 

With UpdraftPlus, you can create automatic backups of your website. This ensures that even if the update fails, you’ll still have a working copy of your website at the ready. 

The general best practice when it comes to bigger WordPress updates is to create a staging environment and test the update from there. 

Your Site Is Vulnerable to Hacking

We’d be doing you no favors if we didn’t mention the issue of security on WordPress. 

WordPress is a massive content management system, powering nearly 40% of the internet. Being as popular as it is, the platform is frequented by hackers from all parts of the globe. 

With every update WordPress ensures that all its security vulnerabilities are fixed. 

They are always fighting toe-to-toe to secure their platform. You might feel that your site is safe and secure but there are always vulnerabilities that you might miss out on. 

Now there are plenty of reasons why your website might get hacked. 

Hackers may try to plant malware, use cross site scripting attacks, spam your site with inappropriate links, and hack just for the fun of it. 

Weak usernames, weak passwords, and exploitation are just some of the ways through which they compromise your website. 

If your website ever gets hacked and you have a backup, you can restore it to an earlier version without compromising it or getting your data lost. 

Your Hosting Company May Have Server Outages

You can’t call any hosting company perfect. 

While most of them guarantee a 99% uptime and actually provide up to that number, there is always a chance of a server outage. 

It’s inevitable because sooner or later technical issues arise.

When you have regular backups on your WordPress site, you don’t have to worry about losing your data to server outages or overloads. If a server outage caused a serious loss to your website, then you can always revert back to a previous backup. 

Again, updraft plus’s automatic backups are perfect for such a purpose. It can help protect your website from all sorts of problems through its WordPress backup support.

Now that we’ve got you up to speed on what can happen with your WordPress website if you don’t have a backup tool installed, let’s move on to the next phase of this post. 

While we didn’t cover all the problems that might affect your site, this is enough of a rundown to make you understand. 

How To Back Up Your WordPress Site Through UpdraftPlus?

There are plenty of ways you can back up your WordPress website. 

There are tons of tools and database level processes available for you to do so. But we’d recommend UpdraftPlus because of the number of options it provides when it comes to backups. 

First and foremost is the installation process. We’ll walk you through it and show just how easy it is. 

How To Install Updraftplus?

A very quick install, UpdraftPlus can be installed through the following steps. 

First and foremost, visit your WordPress dashboard and then navigate to Plugins > Add New. 

When you’re inside the plugins section, type in UpdraftPlus into the search bar. 

When you enter the search results, you’ll see the UpdraftPlus WordPress Backup Plugin displayed in the first search results box. Just click on Install Now, and when that’s done, click on Activate.

How To Use Updraftplus?

When you’re done installing, it’s time to set up through the WordPress Backup options. Follow along with these steps: 

1. From your WordPress dashboard, visit Settings > Updraftplus backups in your WordPress menu. 

When you’re there, click on Settings. 

To schedule a backup of your WordPress website, you can set a time through the drop down below. If your website is high end, you can set up a backup for every two hours. 

The settings are calibrated according to what you want in the backup. In order to avoid loading up your website’s backend with backups upon backups, you can set a schedule for when a new WordPress backup overwrites an existing backup. 

3. Then you can select where the website backup will be stored. 

When you’re scrolling down, you can select the options where you like to store your website’s backup. By itself, the platform makes sure that you get all sorts of options.

4. When you have everything selected all you have to do is click on save changes and voila, you’re done.

If you want to use multiple locations for storing your backup files, then you can use Updraft Premium since it has all the functionalities needed to get you started with backups. 

How To Restore Your WordPress Site From A Backup?

When your website is backed up, you’re safe knowing that you can recover quickly and restore to a previous version when things go wrong. This ensures that when the worst does happen, your website can recover quickly. 

The following is one way you can restore your site to a former backup. 

From your WordPress dashboard click on Settings > Updraft Backup. This will open up the UpdraftPlus menu once again. 

Scroll down the homepage until you see a backup file. 

3. Select the backup you want to restore to. 
4. Afterwards, you’ll be presented with a pop-up which asks you the elements you want to restore. Just select the ones you want and restore them.

When you’ve selected and clicked on Restore, a pop-up will show detailing that the backup has been successful. 

Conclusion:

As we discussed above, it’s best to prepare for the inevitable. Wrong updates, server crashes, and hacks can cause serious problems for your WordPress website. Updraft plus gives you a safe space for your website so you can secure it permanently. 

We hope you enjoyed reading this post. If you’re looking for WordPress developers, Contact Codup today so you can get a premium built WordPress site that helps you get sales and conversions.