Manage your own backups from your website
Managing backups of your website is important to ensure that you always have an up-to-date copy of your website to fall back on in the event of an unexpected to fall back on in case of an unexpected problem or event. Event. There are several factors to consider when you Managing your own backups of your website. In this blog post, we will some tips that can help you manage your own backups safely and efficiently.
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Make regular backups
One of the most important steps in managing backups of your website is to make regular backups. How often you make backups, depends on how often you update your website and how important the website is to you or your business. Website is to you or your business. For example, if you have a high-traffic e-commerce website that undergoes many changes on a daily basis, it is advisable to create daily backups. On the other hand, if you have a static website that is updated only occasionally, a weekly Backup. For most other websites, a weekly backup will will still be sufficient.
Keep backups in a safe place
Another important aspect of managing backups of of your website is to keep them in a safe place. It is a good idea to To store backups in a location other than your website. If you have backups on the same server as your website, you can lose everything lose everything if the server crashes or gets hacked. This is a lesson that is hard to learned.
It is therefore advisable to create backups on an external hard drive or a cloud storage service like Google Drive, Dropbox or Amazon S3. If you want to do everything right, it is advisable to store them in 3 different locations to store them. For example, 1 backup on a Cloud service, 1 backup on your local computer or laptop and 1 backup that you keep on the the hosting storage space. Even in an absolute emergency, you can still back up in almost every scenario imaginable, you can still fall back on a backup.
Give backups a unique name
Another important step in managing backups of your of your website is to give them a unique name that indicates when they were created. were created. This way, you can quickly identify which backup you need when you need it. need. It's also a good idea to name backups according to their content. Label content. For example, if you create a backup after installing a plug-in or a new theme, you can label the backup with the name of the plug-in or theme. of the theme. Also, always include the date in the file name. This way you can quickly see when the backup was created. In our scheduled task you you can also include the date and time in the filename.
Test backups
It is not enough to create backups, you also need to make sure that they are make sure they work. So test regularly whether the backups you create are are working as expected. You can do this by restoring the backup in a Test environment and verify that everything is working as it should. If you find that something is going wrong, you can act quickly and fix the problem before it becomes a bigger problem. That's why it's also important to check your database in addition to the files on your website.
This check can sometimes be difficult, but you can perform it, for example, on a subdomain that you visit for other visit. Note that you will often need to change configuration files to match other URLs and settings. You can also use a local web server for this by installing WAMMP, for example.
Automate backups
Creating backups manually can be time-consuming and prone to errors. Therefore it can be useful to automate this process using software or plug-ins designed specifically for creating and storing backups. Creating and storing backups.
There are many different backup solutions available ranging from free tools to paid services with advanced features. Some popular options include UpdraftPlus, BackupBuddy, Jetpack Backup and CodeGuard. These are specifically tailored to WordPress.
In addition to third-party plugins, it's also possible to perform backups Backups via a scheduled task. You can read more about how this works in our inourknowledge base article.
Plan for emergencies
Although backups ensure that you will always have an up-to-date copy of your website that you can fall back on, it's also important to be Be prepared for emergencies. For example. You also need to know exactly how to restore your website backup. So practice this on a subdomain and familiarize yourself with the steps involved. Involved.
Managing website backups is an important part of maintaining a website. Part of maintaining a website. And belong as soon as you decide to launch a website. Make sure you clean up your backups regularly Clean up in your hosting area on a regular basis. It may happen that these backup files push you over your limit. With the regular Package you will have 25 GB at your disposal. Once every few months, let's say every 4 months, you can create a calendar entry where you delete the backups from the hosting. Of course, you can also use these be stored locally for your own archive.
