Now that you know keeping a backup of your website data is damn important for anyone having a website. Whatever happens in the worst case, you can restore the website very easily.
The best thing that I recommend is having a backup on a cloud server. It minimizes the risk of losing your website due to server hack or server lost from the datacenter. Just in case the server inside the datacenter lose connectivity from the internet, you will lose huge data.
Or say, some hacker hacked the web server. If you had all your website in a single cPanel acccount (as addon domains which is not recommended), all sites are at risk.
Let’s not think negatively and explore some of the best backup plugins for your website or blog.
- WP Backup Free/Paid by MyThemeShop
- Updraft FREE/Pro
- VaultPress
- CodeGuard
VaultPress is the one I am using on my blog vashishthakapoor.com but we are going to start with FREE solutions to backup and restore your website.
#1 My WP Backup
The plugin is FREE. Yes. A free plugin does the job for you to store all your wordpress site data (Sql, images, posts, pages, themes and plugins) on dropbox or google drive.
I will definitely take you thorough the process to installing and taking your first backup using the plugin here.
Let’s start with installing the plugin first. Either download from the wordpress.org website or install it using your native wp-admin dashboard search.
Right after installing the plugin, as usual, I will activate the plugin and head to the quick setup.
The plugin works on manual jobs. You can create any number of jobs to backup your data in different versions and that too manually.
Now the plugin asks me either to perform a backup or restore from a backup. I am using this first time. Obviously, I will be having no earlier backup to be compatible with this plugin.
So, clicking perform a backup will take me to the next window. See where.
First I will configure the job and setup a connection with dropbox (because I have 2GB of free storage here).
You will find the dropbox authorization code once you click the “Connect Dropbox Account” button and authorize after the login.
Here is how I found it.
Woohoo.
Now the backup setup is done.
Let’s head towards running the first backup. (make sure you added a working email while configuring the first job. You will receive an email when the backup is complete.)
In the list of the backup jobs, I clicked “Run” and the above prompt was on my screen.
As simple is that, I will hit “Start”
See, the backup has started.
I will get out of here and wait for a few minutes. Waiting for the “congratulations email”.
Just making sure that I have a file inside my “dropbox”
Yes. This is real.
Now my website data is secure and I have that in my dropbox account.
Yoast SEO just said the readability is good. (ignore).
But. This is manual. If you want to run these jobs on automatic basis, go for the premium version of the plugin.
#2 UpDraft Plus
The straight forward plugin that does the same job for you as the My WP backup plugin.
Let’s take a backup in Updraft Plus too.
The process very similar to the functions of My WP Backup plugin. But a few things I am gonna share with are here.
- More places to store the backups (Google Drive, DropBox, Amazon, Microsoft Onedrive, Google Cloud, FTP and lot more.)
- Automatic backups with retaining a number of backups and deleting the older one’s.
- Advanced option without a need to upgrade
Let’s do it.
No wonders. I downloaded the plugin from inside my wp-admin. (test website) on Nestify hosting
Once you click the “Backup Now” button, you won’t be having an option to send the backup file to the remote storage you want to store your backup in. I prefer clicking the button after setup.
I can store the backup files anywhere. Dropbox, FTP, S3 compatible, Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure on anywhere else from the above list.
But I can select one destination at the moment because I am using the free version of the plugin. (send one backup to more remote storage using the premium version of the plugin.)
I choose DropBox. (I prefer this without any special reason.)
Just had to authenticate DropBox with the updraft plus plugin. Following the link and this landed me on the dropbox authentication page.
Allow without any further wait.
This time I clicked the “backup now” button and it started in a few seconds.
Now I am gonna verify whether the files are being uploaded on dropbox or not. I just have to go to my dropbox account and look into the directory app>>updraft plus folder.
Woooooooooooooooohooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
The files are there now. see
There are 5 files and that is totally fair because everything (DB, plugins, themes and files) are stored separately. Wanna have a look.
I literally have no more words about this awesome plugin.
Now if you have got some budget for this. Let’s have a look into the premium solution.
Well, I use VaultPress by Automattic (a wordpress.com product)
#3 VaultPress by WordPress.com
I can show you how does it work. (bunch of screenshot that can give you a sneak peek view of the plugin)
I have completed the setup already.
Here is the look inside my dashboard. 212 posts, 26 pages, 23 Categories and 14 users with a huge number of comments, themes and plugins. well, over 6k files also. Everything is covered under the backup.
I like the feature of keeping the backup once a change is made in the website. If I add a post or page or anything in my wordpress site, it will be stored in the backup cloud.
No Google Drive, no Dropbox. Only WordPress cloud storage will be having my files.
Either I will restore my website to a previous date’s backup or download the backup files in local drive. Everything is possible.
I am using this because it is super easy and cool enough to keep my mind out of any mess.
#4 CodeGuard
The plugins seems to be much like other backup plugins with an additional feature: virus scanning.
Yet to test it out. If you have any good or bad experience with codeguard wordpress plugin, please share in the comment section below. Maybe I find it good be the description of the codeguard.
Wrapping Up
I have given you a test-drive of the features of 3 plugins here. Any opinion or questions?