It is imperative to take a Backup of a WordPress website from time to time to tackle any mishap. This article discusses creating a manual and automatic backup of a WordPress website and restoring that using the Updraftplus plugin.
It’s recommended to back up your site regularly and store the backups safely.
The Updraft plugin allows you to take a scheduled backup of your website and save that Backup to your cloud service provider.
Updraftplus is a powerful free WordPress website Backup and Restore tool with over 14 million downloads.
Set up of Updraftplus plugin
Installation: To take a scheduled and manual backup of the WordPress website, install the Updraftplus plugin. If you don’t know how to do that, read how to install a WordPress plugin.
After installation and activation, access the Updraftplus plugin by scrolling to Settings> Updraftplus Backup. Next, you’ll be on the Updraftplus plugin’s homepage, where you can access all the features.
- Access the UpdraftPlus plugin in Settings and
- Click on UpdraftPlus Backups
In the UpdraftPlus plugins Backup/Restore settings, you can check all the options available to take Backup and restore the WordPress website.
- Backup Section: You can manually Backup your WordPress website in this section. To create a backup file, click the Backup Now button, and the backup process begins.
- Existing Backup/Restore Section: This section contains all the backup files of your WordPress website.
How to Set up Automatic WordPress Backup using UpdraftPlus
Automatic Backup of the WordPress website can make you feel safe from the fear of losing work due to website breaks, hacks, or other mishaps with the website. The Updraftplus plugin allows you to schedule backups for regular intervals.
The UpdraftPlus allows you to take offsite Backup, which means the Backup will not save in the website database. You can take the Backup to
- Google Drive
- Dropbox
- Amazon S3
- Rackspace Cloud
- DreamObjects
- OpenStack Swift
- Updraft Vault
The most commonly used platform is Google Drive, so this tutorial article will take our website’s Backup on Google Drive.
- File Backup Schedule: This setting allows you to set a WordPress backup schedule and the number of backups to retain to the cloud storage.
- Database Backup Schedule: Set the backup interval for the database and the total number of databases to retain the Cloud storage.
- Choose the remote storage for Backup: You can choose the cloud storage where you want to store all the backups of your WordPress website. For this tutorial, we’re selecting Google Drive.
- Select the file to include in the Backup for WordPress and save changes.
You may wonder why we haven’t selected any Google Drive account to save the Backup. Don’t worry; in the next step, we’ve to connect the Drive to the UpdraftPlus Backup plugin.
Now you’ve to authorize the UpdraftPlus backup plugin by following the link to store the WordPress backup data to Google drive remotely. This step is essential to create a backup to remote storage.
Select the Drive account where you want to store the WordPress backup data. And tap on Allow to give permission to upload, delete and edit files in the Google account.
After you grant all permissions to the UpdraftPlus Backup plugin, it will redirect you to the final step to complete schedule backups. Next, you’ve to click on the complete setup button; this will redirect you to the plugin’s dashboard.
We successfully configured the plugin to take scheduled backups of our WordPress website. It will automatically take and store the backup file in Cloud Storage.
How to create a Backup using Updraftplus Plugin manually.
The UpdraftPlus plugin can create backups of the WordPress website per the schedule you defined in its settings. However, you can also take backups manually of the WordPress website anytime you like. For example, you can take a manual backup if there is no automatic backup after a significant update on your website.
To take the manual action, scroll to UpdraftPlus Plugin’s dashboard, and in the Backup/Restore section, click on the Backup Now button.
There will be a pop-up window for backup settings as you click on Backup Now. In this window, you can choose what to include in the Backup of the WordPress website.
- Backup Now: Go to the UpdraftPlus dashboard and click on the Backup Now button. This button initiates the backup process for your WordPress website. A backup process window will pop up when you click on the button.
- Include Database: This option will allow you to take the Backup of the database of the WordPress website,
- Include Files: You can choose the file to be included in the WordPress backup; There will be three dots (…) to expand the file settings for Backup; these files are
- Plugin
- Themes,
- Uploads,
- Any other file inside wp-content
- Send the Backup to the remote server: This option will send the backup file to the remote server or cloud server.
- Backup Now: Click the Backup now button, and the UpdraftPlus will create the WordPress Backup of the selected file for free.
UpdraftPlus will start creating a backup point for your WordPress website when you click on the Backup now button. You can check for this Backup is completed or not in the existing backup section.
As in the above image, one Backup is available in the existing backups section. Backup data is also visible along with the backup date.
How to restore the WordPress site with UpdraftPlus manually?
After creating backup data using the UpdarftPlus Backup plugin, the next task is to restore the backup data to the WordPress website.
There could be many reasons for your need for the restoration of data.
- The WordPress website got hacked,
- If there is some issue with the current database, so you want to restore it to the earlier backup point,
- Server loss or mistakenly deleted files from the server that cause a break in the website,
- Tweaking with a live WordPress website causes some errors, etc
To restore the database, Let’s understand all the options provided to restore the WordPress website.
- Upload backup file: You can use this service to create a backup of your website on a cloud service. Suppose you made a backup in Google drive. And somehow, your website got down, and there is no option instead than installing WordPress from scratch. To restore all data from the WordPress backup file, install the UpdraftPlus Plugin and connect with the same cloud service. Or you can also download the Backup from the cloud server and upload that data.
- Rescan local folder: This will rescan the local folder for backup files.
- Rescan remote storage: If you made the connection again to the WordPress and no backup is visible. You can rescan to check the backup files.
- Backup Data: It will display the type of backup data available with the set of backup files, that is, database, Plugins, Themes, Uploads, and Other data.
- Actions: To restore, upload, and delete the database,
The UpdraftPlus backup plugin allows you to back up and Restore a WordPress website for free. It also creates a scheduled backup of the complete website.
Several other ways to back up a WordPress website include using a plugin, manual methods, or a third-party service.
- Using a plugin: Many free and paid plugins can automate creating backups of your site’s database and files. Popular options include UpdraftPlus, BackupBuddy, and VaultPress.
- Manual method: You can create a website backup by copying your site’s files and database. You can use an FTP client to download the files and a tool like phpMyAdmin to export the database.
- Third-party service: Many third-party services offer website backup solutions, such as BackupBuddy Stash, Amazon S3, and Google Drive. These services can automatically create backups of your site and store them in the cloud for easy restoration.
I hope you like this article on the UpdraftPlus Backup plugin. In case of any questions or suggestions, feel free to ask in the comment section below.
