The best security that anyone can do for his wp website is having a good wordpress backup system.
One thing that security plugins are not going to protect you, is when your web host is attacked.
Therefore, you should frequently backup your WordPress site.
Infrequent backups make your site lose a lot of data in case you have to recover it after a hack. I suggest backing up your site at least weekly or even daily in case you have a news website.
WordPress is the most commonly used content management system (CMS) because it has a rate of approximately 27% of all websites currently live on the internet. It’s also an open-source platform, which means anyone and everyone has access to coding.
source torquemag.io
The best security measure you could take right now is to make sure that you have a good backup system in place and to know how to actually restore those backups.
There are many plugins that can help with backups and security.
7 reasons why your website need a backup and how to set it up:
1. Accidentally deleting your data or server crash
Did you know that “About 70% of business people have experienced (or will experience) data loss due to accidental deletion, disk or system failure, viruses, fire or some other disaster
Source: Carbonite, an online backup service
2. Getting hacked is a reality
On average 30,000 new websites are identified every day distributing malicious code to any users passing by. Many hold on to the idea that viruses are distributed from adult sites, gambling and other forms of vice but in reality, the majority of these 30,000 sites are legitimate small businesses that are unwittingly distributing malicious code for the cybercriminals.
source Sophos Labs
3. Updates can go wrong
Usually, WordPress updates are okay without any problems but sometimes things do go wrong. The same situation can apply to plugins and theme installations. Not all the plugins and themes have version rollback and the rollback process can cost you a lot of time and money.
4. You missed a hosting bill or payment
You missed a hosting bill or payment. These things happen, rarely, but you should be prepared.
5. You can lose your business
Recovery after a malware attack can cost you a lot of time and money and if you are a small business the chances are, you’re going to lose your business.
60% of small businesses who suffer from a malware attack are out of business within six months.
source Denverpost.com
6. Most hosting providers don’t perform regular backups
Most hosting providers don’t perform regular backups unless you’re paying for a website backup service. You should host your website on a cloud hosting or with a big hosting company who knows what is doing.
7. You want to restore your website quickly if you’re hacked
The beauty of having a complete backup of your entire website installation is that instead of trying to ferret out all the infected code it is much easier, faster and safer to just delete the site and rebuild it from the backup.
source Bradley & Company
Do you know where it is that backup and do you know how to restore it?
You should know the answers to these questions.
You cannot trust your web host to have a backup. You need to make sure your backup is on a different server or even on a cloud. You also need you to have direct access to that backup anytime.
According to web development firm Bradley & Company:
Web hosts might not run their backups as often as your situation requires … it is never a good idea to solely rely on your web host for your backups.
You have to have your own backup that is automated and is off-site.
Your backup strategy needs to have a restore component in case you need to restore a backup.
Prevention is the key.
There are several plugins that you can use; some will backup the whole site and others will just backup files.
Take today some time to setup some decent backups. I’ll show our the top 3 plugins which will help you with your website backup.
UpdraftPlus WordPress Backup Plugin
WordPress is a bunch of files and a database.
The files don’t change that much; they are changing when you update WordPress or when you install/update themes or install/update a plugin.
Whenever you add a page or a post or get a comment that brings modifications in your database.
You need to have a different backup frequency for those two things.
The files, don’t change that often, so you should automate backing them up once a week.
The database backup, because it is very important, you need to back it up every single day.
All of these features are free and offered by UpDraftPlus. It is the most popular scheduled backup plugin.
The next step is to choose which remote storage solution you want to use to store your backup off-site.
You can store your backup on Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3 (or compatible), UpdraftVault, Rackspace Cloud, FTP, DreamObjects, OpenStack Swift, and email. The paid version also backs up to Microsoft OneDrive, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Storage, Backblaze B2, SFTP, SCP, and WebDAV. We suggest to make your WordPress Backup to Dropbox.
If you have WP Multisite we recommend to use the paid version.
You can see here all the UpDraftPlus premium features.
Updraftplus is the highest-rated backup and restore plugin on WordPress and ranks in the top 30 (of over 50,000) WordPress plugins for popularity. This is a big thing. You should give it a try.
All-in-one WP Migration Plugin
This plugin will take the website and clone it and back it up.
It’s really simple to use and it has tons of really good positive reviews about it.
This plugin backup the databases too. A lot of backup plugins do not do that.
Get started with the free version. From there, if you need more functionality, consider moving onto the paid version. The free version only allows sites with less than 512MB of files.
You can export backup to File, FTP, Dropbox, Google Drive or Amazon S3.
This plugin exports your WordPress website including the database, media files, plugins and themes with no technical knowledge required.
Backup Buddy Plugin
BackupBuddy backups your complete site including the database, as well as all images and themes files and plugins files.
It’s a premium plugin so you probably need to take a look over its features and see if you need all of them.
You can choose where to save your backup. We suggest to make your WordPress Backup to Dropbox. You just need to connect your plugin with your Dropbox account.
In the next video, you will find step by step instructions to install and configure the plugin.
Also, you can set up how often you want to backup your website. It is a very popular plugin made by the iThemes.
Conclusion
The important message to take away is that disastrous events can happen so should backup your website as often as possible.
Not doing that, it may affect your business directly and it doesn’t worth that risk. Start doing it now and keep your business safe.
I have over 15 years of experience in building plugins and themes for WordPress and other platforms.
Contact me if you have plugins that you want me to check before you insert them into your website. I will be happy to check them for security and speed.
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I think the UpdraftPlus WordPress Backup Plugin is the best for a newbie. Thanks
Thank you.