How to Back Up a WordPress Site (Manually & Automatically)

If you’ve ever experienced a broken website, you know just how devastating it can be to try to recover or rebuild if you don’t have a copy to restore from. It can cost hours, days, or even months of downtime; leading to revenue loss, increased expenses, and emotional distress for you and anyone who relies on your site. Being able to restore your files and database if anything goes wrong can prevent this kind of painful situation. This is why making backups of your WordPress site, with a tool like Jetpack Backup, is absolutely critical. 

In this article we’ll walk you through:

• What is a WordPress backup?
• Why do you need a backup of your site?
• Methods for creating a WordPress backup
  • Automatic backups from your web host
  • Manual backups
  • Backups using plugins
• Which manual backup method is the best?
• How often should I back up my WordPress site?
• Where should I store my WordPress backups?
• How do I know that I haven’t missed any files when performing a manual backup of my WordPress site?
• What makes WordPress backup with a plugin better than manual?
• How many backups should I keep?

What is a WordPress backup?

A WordPress backup is a complete copy of everything that makes up your site. It can be used to restore your website to a previous state if it becomes corrupted or damaged and to migrate from one host to another. Your backup should include:

• WordPress core files. These are all the files included when you install WordPress on your server. The main folders include wp-admin, wp-content, and wp-includes and a number of files in the root folder of your server like wp-config.php, .htaccess, user.ini or php.ini, and index.php.

• Your database. Your database is a system of tables, columns, relationships and permissions that stores dynamic and searchable information displayed on your website. Some of the information stored includes user account data, page and post content, customer orders, form entries and other user inputs, and data generated by plugins.

• Theme files. WordPress uses theme files to create the layout and aesthetic of a website. A theme may also have components that influence functionality. 

• Plugins. Think of plugins as apps you install on your WordPress site to provide added functions beyond what WordPress core or your theme provides. Plugins contain specific programmed functions that can add new features to your site and extend its capabilities without any additional code. 

• Uploaded files. Images, videos, documents, and other files that you or other site users uploaded to the WordPress media library or wp-content folder.

It’s critical that all these elements are included in each backup you create so that your website can be properly restored if something goes wrong.

Why make a backup of your WordPress site?

The number one reason you need to keep backups of your WordPress site is to prevent data loss. Whether you’re running a complex eCommerce store or maintaining a simple landing page, you don’t want to lose the work that you’ve put forth and have to start over from scratch if your site experiences a serious problem. 

You’ll want to restore your WordPress site from a backup if:

1. Your website was hacked

If your website gets hacked, you’ll want to restore your site to a version before it was compromised. Don’t forget to change all your passwords and make sure you’ve installed a WordPress security plugin to help prevent future attacks.

2. A plugin, theme, or WordPress core update caused an issue on your site

When updating to the newest version of a plugin, a theme, or WordPress core, you may occasionally get scary fatal errors. These errors might result in the dreaded white screen of death, but sometimes you might experience less obvious problems. Your site may still load, but display a fatal error script that appears on the front or back end. Or you might experience subtle functionality issues that could take longer to discover. 

By restoring from a backup, you can roll your site back to its most recent working version. You can also use it to create a staging site so that you, a plugin or theme author, your host, or another developer can troubleshoot the problem. If your hosting company provides a one-click staging option, it will make the process that much easier.

3. You added a malicious or badly-coded plugin to your site

There are thousands of WordPress plugins available and it can be difficult to know if the one you’re installing is well-built or even legitimate. Using plugins from reputable sources like WordPress.org, widely-used paid online marketplaces, or consulting our curated list of WordPress must-have plugins will at least prevent you from installing plugins that contain malware. Why? Because there are review processes the plugins must go through before they are approved and made available to the public. However, poorly coded plugins can still make it past the review process, and installing them on your site can cause major havoc. 

In a case where you can’t fix the issue by simply uninstalling the offending plugin, you’ll want to be able to restore your site.

4. Your host made an error

If your host accidentally deleted an important directory or made other problematic changes to your server, your site may go down or experience functionality issues. You’ll need to restore your site from a backup made before your host caused the problem. 

5. You’re migrating your site from one host to another or changing your domain name

If you need to move hosts or you’ve decided to change your domain name, you’ll want to make a backup of your site. A lot can happen during the migration process or when making changes to your website’s root URL, so make sure you have a backup before starting either process. 

6. You’re making major design changes to your site or implementing a new theme

While it’s best to make big design changes or switch themes on a staging site instead of your live site, you’ll want to keep a backup either way. Your staging environment may be different than your live environment, so your staging site might work well but your live site might experience problems. Being able to roll back to a previous version will reduce any downtime or problems visitors might experience while you troubleshoot the issue.

7. You made a mistake while making changes to your site

Let’s say you want to work on your website’s page speed and decide to remove unused images that are hogging space on your server. Whether you do this manually or use a plugin, you run the risk of accidentally deleting important images from your website. Back your site up before you start deleting anything so that you don’t lose potentially critical images and other files forever. 

8. You regularly delete certain data to save space

If you run a site that has a lot of users, you might find yourself needing to delete some data periodically to prevent it from slowing down. eCommerce stores, forums, and websites where users can submit their own posts or media can quickly grow large and cumbersome. You may delete inactive users or customers, old orders, or other information to keep your site’s performance optimized. 

At some point, you may need to retrieve that deleted information, though. Perhaps a customer wants to order a product again and they can’t remember what size or color they purchased. If you deleted that order, you may need to look in a backup of your database to find that information. Or maybe an inactive forum member wants access to their comment history, but you deleted their account. Being able to retrieve that information from a backup will allow you to restore it for the user.

How to backup your WordPress website (3 methods)

1. WordPress Backup Plugins

There are a variety of plugins that allow you to back up your WordPress site either on-demand or at scheduled times. However, some of these backup plugins involve complicated setup or they store the backups on your own server, which can weigh your site down and cause slow load times. Jetpack Backup is an excellent option for hassle-free, real-time, easy and automatic WordPress backups that don’t bog down your site.

The advantages of Jetpack Backup include:

• Easy setup. Just install Jetpack, purchase a backup plan, and you’re all set. 
• Real-time backups. Many backup plugins only offer daily backups. But if you regularly change your site or run an online store, real-time backups may be crucial in preventing data loss. Jetpack saves a copy of your website whenever a major change is made. 
• Off-site storage. Storing backups on your server can slow your website down. Worse yet, if your server goes down, you won’t be able to access your backups at all! Or they may be compromised in the event of a hack. Jetpack securely stores your backups off-site so you always have access to them, whether you can get into your site or not. 
• Simple migration. Jetpack Backup is also a migration plugin. Easily migrate your site to any host without installing additional plugins or hiring a developer.
• Manual downloads. While Jetpack stores your backups on their servers, you can also download them to your hard drive and upload them to cloud storage platforms like Google Drive, Dropbox, or Amazon S3 — a little redundancy is never a bad thing with backups as long as you have the storage space.
• No limits on backup sizes or frequencies. A lot of backup plugins limit the size of your backups or how often you can save your site. Not Jetpack! Easily back up a large website as often as you’d like.
• Superior customer support. The Jetpack team is made up of WordPress experts. Rest assured that your website and backups are in good hands.

2. Automatic backups through your hosting service provider

Many hosting companies offer daily site backup plans for their customers — often included for free with your hosting service. Sounds like a sweet deal, right? Not necessarily. 

Here are four good reasons not to rely on your host for WordPress backups:

• It has short, inflexible archive windows. Most web hosts keep your backups for 15-30 days with no options for extending that archive period. 
• If your host goes down, your backups are inaccessible. If your hosting provider experiences an outage, your server is down, or — worse yet — they suddenly go out of business, you may lose access to all your backups. 
• Technically, backups aren’t their responsibility. Make sure you read the fine print in your service agreement. Many hosts include disclaimers that state they will make good faith efforts to back up your data regularly, but that these backups are intended for internal use only. They cannot guarantee that any given backup will be available upon request or that restored backups will work correctly. Most hosts’ terms explicitly state that it is ultimately your responsibility to back up your own site.
• If your site is compromised, your backups could be too. If someone hacks your site, they may also gain access to your server. If your backups are stored there, they could also be compromised.

When signing up for your hosting service, you’re agreeing to these terms. While your web host may offer great backup and restore services, others may not — and one way or the other you shouldn’t rely solely on your host for WordPress backups.

3. Manual WordPress backups 

WordPress sites are built using a database, WordPress core files, themes, plugins, and any other files you choose to upload. Not only will you need to back up all these WordPress-related files, but you’ll also need to back up the database. The most common ways of backing up these components of your site include:

Back up your WordPress site with cPanel

cPanel is a widely-used graphical user interface (GUI) that simplifies server management. From cPanel, you can set up websites, manage your file structure, change your domain settings, create backups of your site, and more.

1. Log into your hosting account and then open cPanel

If you’re not sure how to find cPanel in your hosting account, you can contact your host or look through their knowledge base for help.

2. Create your site backup

Under the Files section, click the Backup Manager link.

In Backup Manager, click on cPanel Backups. If you want a guided version, you can use the cPanel Backup Wizard. 

In the cPanel Backups screen, under Full Backup, click “Download or Generate a Full Website Backup”. 

If you want to download your files and database separately, you can choose those options under “Partial Backups”. Make sure you select the correct database from the Databases field if you’re downloading the database separately. 

Once you’ve selected the download option you prefer, you’ll be taken to a screen letting you know that your backup is in progress. You can go ahead and click the Go Back link to be taken to your available downloads.

Your backups will be listed with a little blue checkmark next to them on the Backups Available for Download page. Click your backup to download it to your computer and you’re all set!

Not every web host offers cPanel access for their customers, so making a backup this way may not be an option for you. For instance, managed WordPress hosts don’t use cPanel. 

If you’re using managed WordPress hosting and you want to access your site’s file directory to make a backup, you will need to use secure file transfer protocol (SFTP), secure shell protocol (SSH), or a plugin that grants folder-based access to your site’s files. While your managed WordPress portal will not include a cPanel-like file tree, it should include a link to phpMyAdmin for database access. 

Back up your files using FTP/SFTP

You can manually back up your WordPress site’s files using a file transfer protocol (FTP) client. An FTP client is a program that connects your computer to your website’s server so you can upload, download, and manage files. There are several different FTP clients available for free, like FileZilla, CyberDuck, and ClassicFTP. A quick Google search for “free FTP client” should help you find the one that is right for you. 

For this walkthrough, we’ll use FileZilla:

1. Find your FTP credentials in your hosting control panel. 

The location of your FTP credentials may vary from site to site, so if you have trouble finding them, reach out to your host for help. You’ll need the following information:

Host address. This is usually the server IP address or might be a URL.

Username. This is your FTP username. It’s specific to your FTP connection and should not be the same as your hosting account username. 

Password. You may be asked to generate a new FTP password when attempting to access your credentials. If so, you’ll want to write this password down somewhere. Some hosts don’t save FTP passwords on your account, so if you try to retrieve it later, it will prompt you to generate a new one. This can get annoying if you have FTP settings for a website saved on multiple installations of your FTP client — laptop, desktop, co-worker’s laptop, etc.

Port number. You’ll want to connect to your server via SFTP (secure) vs FTP (insecure). SFTP ports are usually 22 or 2222. If your account credentials don’t mention the port number, you can always check your host’s help documentation for this information.

2. Log into your FTP client using the above credentials and click Quickconnect.

3. Select a folder to save your backup to

The left side of your screen will show the files on your computer. The right side of your screen shows the files on your web host’s server. Navigate to the folder on your computer where you want to save your backup and click on it. You’ll see its contents in the bottom left window. 

Optionally, you can right click to create a new directory.

If you’re creating a new directory, enter its name and click OK.

Your new folder named Backups will be visible in the bottom left window. Double-click the folder to open it.

4. Navigate to your site’s root directory on the right-hand side of the screen

It’s usually called html or public_html. It may have another name, depending on your host, but the important thing is that you’ll know you’ve found the right directory if it contains the wp-admin, wp-content, and wp-includes folders.

5. Download your site’s files from the root directory

Select all the files and folders in your site’s root directory. 

Right-click and select Download. You can also select all the files and folders and just click and drag them to the open folder window on the left-hand side of your screen.

Your files will now be downloaded to your local machine. Make sure to upload them to cloud storage like Google Drive or DropBox and save another copy on an external hard drive.

Don’t forget! This process only backs up your site’s files. It does NOT back up your database. You’ll also need to back up your database, which you can do via phpMyAdmin or SSH.

Create a WordPress database backup with phpMyAdmin

phpMyAdmin is an online software used for the administration of MySQL and MariaDB databases (the database types used by WordPress). It has a GUI that makes navigating and managing your database much easier than trying to do it all from the command line. 

It can still be a bit scary to poke around in your database if you don’t know what you’re doing. Fortunately, exporting a backup of your database in phpMyAdmin is fairly straightforward:

1. Log into cPanel or your managed WordPress portal in your hosting account

If you’re in cPanel, you’ll see phpMyAdmin listed under Databases. If you’re using a managed WordPress host, there should be a link to phpMyAdmin in your portal. If you can’t find it, contact your host or search their documentation for help.

2. Click on the phpMyAdmin icon to launch the phpMyAdmin window in your browser

3. Select your database

If your database name isn’t selected already, click on the database you want to export. Once your database is selected, you’ll see a list of all the tables included. 

3. Click on the Export tab

4. Select export method and format

You can then choose from a Quick or Custom export. The Quick export will export your entire database. If you want to review the tables being exported and exclude some, select the Custom export option. 

Quick export method selected.

Custom export selected, excluding wp_comments and wp_commentmeta tables.

phpMyAdmin should show the database output option as ‘SQL’ by default. If for some reason ‘text’ or some other option is selected, switch it to ‘SQL’.

5. Click ‘Go’

That’s it! phpMyAdmin will export the database as a ZIP or GZIP file and prompt you to download it to your computer to use as your database backup. 

Make a site backup using SSH

SSH (Secure Shell or Secure Socket Shell) is a network protocol that provides secure access from one computer to another over an unsecured network. Mac OS and Linux include the SSH client Terminal. Windows 10 includes an SSH client option, but it is not installed automatically and must be downloaded and enabled separately. Other Windows versions don’t include an SSH client, so you’ll need to download one from a third party, like PuTTY. 

Most SSH clients don’t have a GUI and rely on text-based commands to connect to and perform functions like uploads, downloads, deletions, file name changes, and more on a remote host. Unlike SFTP, you can back up both your site files and your database using SSH. Here’s how:

1. Find or create SSH credentials in your host’s control panel. 

Where your SSH credentials are located and exactly how you’ll generate them if they do not exist already might vary depending on your host, so if you aren’t sure where to find it, reach out to your provider or search their FAQs for help.

Sometimes your SSH and SFTP credentials are the same, so check under your FTP settings area to see if this is the case.

You’ll need the following information:

• Host IP address
• Username
• Password
• Port number

You may also need to generate an SSH key, depending on your host’s requirements. For this example, we’ll just use host, username, password, and port number.

2. Find your SSH application and open it.

On Mac OS, you’ll go to Applications → Utilities → Terminal. On Linux you can press CTL + ALT + T. If you’re using Windows, you’ll use whichever SSH client you installed. 

3. Type this command: ssh  username@remotehost  -p 2222

Replace ‘username’ with your username, ‘remotehost’ with your host’s IP address, and ‘2222’ with your host’s port, then press Enter. 

If this is your first time connecting to the server, you’ll be asked if you want to continue connecting. Type ‘yes’ and press Enter. You’ll receive a warning that your server’s IP address has been permanently added to the list of known hosts. You won’t see this message again if you’re connecting from the same machine. 

4. Type your password and press Enter. 

You’ll be prompted for your password. Copy and paste it at the command prompt. You will not see the password or any other feedback displayed. This is normal. Press Enter.

You’re connected to the remote server — time to back up your site.

5. Type the following at the command prompt:  cd ~

6. Type this command to make a backup of your site files: tar   -zcf    backup.tar.gz    directory_name

Replace ‘directory_name’ with the name of the directory you want to back up. This should be the directory that the WordPress folders wp-admin, wp-content, and wp-config are in. If your site’s root directory is ‘public_html’, then your command will look like this:

tar   -zcf    backup.tar.gz    public_html

Your backup is complete but is still sitting on your server. You’ll need to download it from your server so you can keep your backup stored safely off-site.

7. Download the backup of your site files.

Type the following at the command prompt: 

scp -p 2222 username@remotehost:/directory_name/backup.tar.gz  directory_name

Replace ‘2222’ with your port number, ‘username’ with your username, ‘remotehost’ with your server’s IP address, ‘directory_name’ with the directory name your site’s files are in, and the second ‘directory_name’ with the directory on your computer that you want to download your backup to. Then hit Enter.

Your files should now download from your server to your computer.

8. Download your database.

Oh, you thought you were done? No. You still need to download your database. You’ll need the following information:

Database username. This is different from your SFTP or SSH username and is assigned only to your database.

Database name. The name of your database.

Password. Your database password, which should be different than your SFTP or SSH password.

You can find this information in your hosting account. If you have trouble finding it, contact your host for assistance or browse their help documentation. 

If you’re still logged into your server via SSH after downloading your site files, you’ll enter the following command at the prompt:

mysqldump -u USERNAME -p DATABASE > database_backup.sql

Replace ‘username’ with your database username and ‘database’ with your database name.

You’ll then be prompted to enter your database password. Type in your password and press Enter.

Your database will be exported as ‘database_backup.sql’ in your current directory. To download it to your local machine, enter the following command:

scp -p 2222 username@remotehost:/directory_name/database_backup.sql  /directory_name

Replace ‘2222’ with your port number, ‘username’ with your username, ‘remotehost’ with your server’s IP address, ‘directory_name’ with the directory name your site’s files are in, and ‘/local/dir’ with the directory on your computer that you want to download your database to. Then hit Enter.

9. Delete backups from your server (optional)

Keep in mind that the backups you made are still on your server. If you don’t want to keep them there, you can remove them using the following commands:

Site files:

rm  database_backup.sql

Database:

rm  database_backup.sql

Which manual backup method is the best for WordPress?

Making your WordPress backup through cPanel is the easiest way to perform a manual backup, but not all web hosts use cPanel. If you don’t have access to cPanel through your host, your next best bet for a relatively painless manual backup would be to download all your site files using SFTP and back up your database through phpMyAdmin.

Make backing up your WordPress site a priority

No matter what method you choose or the frequency of the schedule — make backups a priority. Don’t risk your hard work and important data by procrastinating this aspect of running your site. If you’re putting off backups because it seems like a chore, Jetpack Backup makes the process easy and painless. Keep your data safe in less time than it takes to submit a ticket to your host’s tech support team. In the long run, you’ll save money, time, and file recovery headaches if and when something goes wrong.

WordPress backup FAQs

How often should I back up my WordPress site?

The short answer is: regularly. But depending on how often your site is updated with new content, you may want to back it up monthly, weekly, daily, or in real-time. A static website that isn’t updated with new content very often may only need daily backups. A busy eCommerce site, on the other hand, may need real-time backups to minimize loss of customer or product data.

Where should I store my WordPress backups?

Keep your backups off-site and in at least two places — preferably three. If you keep your backups on your own server, it can seriously slow down your website. Each backup is a complete duplication of all your site’s content, so if you keep a month of daily backups on your server, that’s 30 full websites taking up space. Yikes! Also, if your server goes down, you may lose access to all your backups — which defeats the purpose of making them in the first place, right?

Jetpack Backup keeps your backups off-site on WordPress.com’s own servers, and you can periodically download your site archives to your local machine. From there, you can copy them to an external hard drive and upload another copy to a cloud storage service like Google Drive, Amazon S3, or Dropbox.

Even though your hosting company can’t necessarily be relied upon for backups, it doesn’t hurt to choose a plan that includes at least 30 days of daily backups. In addition to your own due diligence, this should ensure that you have the best possibility of restoring your site.

How do I know that I haven’t missed any files when performing a manual backup of my WordPress site?

As long as you’ve backed up your database and your entire site directory on your webhost, you can be pretty sure that you’ve backed up everything you need. However, with manual backups, you may not get any error messages if a resource fails to download or becomes corrupted during the process. So there’s always the chance your backup may be missing a file or might include a damaged file.

When manually backing up all your site’s files, you’ll want to download the full contents of your site’s root folder. 

If you aren’t sure what folder on your server is your site’s root folder, it’s usually called html or public_html, but it may have another name. You can either ask your host or click around in the file directory until you find the folder that contains wp-admin, wp-content, and wp-includes — that’s your root folder. 

If you host any of your site’s content — like images or video — on another server, you’ll want to make sure to make backups of those, too.

If you want to be certain that your backup worked, you can install it on a staging site and test it to make sure everything is there and that the site backup is functioning correctly.

How many backups should I keep?

If you have a website with a lot of dynamic content, you should keep at least a year’s worth of backups. If your site is fairly static, you may be safe just keeping 30-90 days worth.  

The number of backups you keep really just depends on how likely you think it is that you’ll need to access data from a certain date, or at what point you feel that content is not worth holding onto. Additionally, you may be subject to legal requirements that dictate that website data must be retained for a certain number of days or years, or destroyed after a specific period. 

What makes WordPress backup with a plugin better than manual?

Using a plugin to back up your site is easier, safer, and saves you time. By automating your backups with a plugin like Jetpack, you can focus on design, functionality, content, or marketing. Or maybe just relax and take a nice walk! 

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