Backups.
We all know it’s good to have one, but if you don’t make it a habit to create one often then it won’t be there when you need it.
I have two plugins that I use to create backups.
UpdraftPlus
The free one is called UpdraftPlus.
I like to set this one up to automatically send a backup to my Google Drive account.
If you’re using the free one it will create a folder in your Google Drive called UpdraftPlus and all your backup files will end up there.
If you get the paid version then you can choose the folder you want to send them to.
When setting up how often you want the backups to run and how long you want to keep them I base it off of how often the site content gets updated.
The more updates you make, the more often you should make a backup.
For an e-commerce site I make backups of the database every hour and keep 72 of those for three days worth.
The files get backed up daily and I keep 14 days worth of those, but that’s only if I’m uploading new images and files to my site every day.
If I’m uploading less often then I make file backups weekly and keep 4 of them to make it a month’s worth.
Once you have the settings configured then you should be good to go.
All-in-One WP Migration
This plugin is my favorite to make backups with because it makes it super easy to download a full copy of your site and move it to a new server when you need to.
There’s a free version that you can download from the WordPress plugin repository and it will let you make a backup of your site with no problem.
The downside to this plugin is having to pay for each of the extensions that let you do more with this plugin like restoring backups of your site that are larger than 150MB and running automatic backups in the background and storing them off-site.
It’s a pain to have to pay for each of the extensions, but as of right now you only have to pay for one time for each and it’s a simple plugin that has yet to fail me.
It just works every time.
I’m sure there are other backup plugins and services out there, but these two have been good to me for years.
At the very least get UpdraftPlus set up to run automatically on your site.
You’ll be glad you did.