What are the types of WordPress backups? Read this article to find further.
A WordPress website, like your computer, phone, or hard drive, requires a backup to capture changes and updates to the files that make your site work.
Understanding the many types of backups you may make of your WordPress site is essential to having a sound backup strategy for your WordPress site. Each has a certain application and can be useful in certain scenarios to help you save time.
What is the purpose of a WordPress backup?
A WordPress backup is a copy of your WordPress site at any given point in time. In a word, a WordPress backup is a completely functional copy of your WordPress database as well as all of the files necessary to keep your websites running, such as your themes, plugins, and any uploaded media.
If your website is corrupted or lost for any reason, having a backup of the full site will allow you to quickly restore it to a point before it crashed or was compromised.
What are the various forms of backups for WordPress?
The database, themes, plugins, WordPress core files, and your Media Library are just a few of the crucial components of your WordPress site. Backing up each of these components separately can be beneficial for a variety of reasons.
One of the best reasons to use BackupBuddy, the WordPress backup plugin, is the ability to run more detailed backups of your WordPress site.
BackupBuddy allows you to backup your WordPress website right from the WordPress admin dashboard. You can do numerous different types of WordPress backups with only a few clicks. Badckupbuddy's parent product is a popular security plugin iThemes.
Check out the iThemes discount coupons and save up to 45% OFF.
BackupBuddy has five backup choices, or Backup Profiles, to choose from, including:
1. A Full (Complete) Backup
Consider a Complete backup to be the "whole shebang." Because this backup contains everything connected to your WordPress installation, it's critical to execute it soon after you install BackupBuddy.
Keep in mind that depending on the total size of your website, this form of backup may be a larger file.
All of the following items are included in a comprehensive backup of your website:
- Pages \sPosts \sWidgets
- Comments Plugin Files Theme Files
- Media Library Files Theme & Plugin Settings
- WordPress Preferences
- Database for WordPress
- WordPress Plugins and Themes
- Custom Post Types for Users
- Tags & Categories
- JPG, JPEG, PNG, PDF, and other image formats
- WooCommerce items, transactions, and sales, among other things
One great feature of BackupBuddy backups is the opportunity to download a zip file of your backup, which is effectively a folder containing your entire website.
Also, while changing web whosts, Complete (Full) Backups are very important. You won't have to rely on your prior host for assistance with the migration if you have a BackupBuddy Complete Backup.
Many hosts and other programmes ignore crucial elements of the migration process (such as serialised data migration), resulting in a faulty migration.
BackupBuddy suggests performing Complete Backups once a week for active sites and every two weeks for less-active sites, depending on how often you upload new media or add/upgrade plugins and themes.
2. Database backup
"A WordPress site is just a database with a face," we often say. That is, the majority of the critical components of your website, such as the content of your articles, users, comments, categories and tags, settings, links, and so on, are stored in a MySQL database.
A database-only backup protects your WordPress database while consuming less storage space and slowing down your server.
Once BackupBuddy has finished backing up your Database, you can download the backup as a zip file to expand it. Here's a sneak peek inside.
When to Use a Database Backup: A Database backup is a "simplified" version of a Complete backup because it only contains the database of your WordPress site. If you're confident that the only changes you've made to your site have been to posts, pages, or comments, use this backup method. (Please note that this backup does not include your WordPress Media Library, so any image uploads will be lost.)
Because your database changes far more frequently than your files and folders, we recommend running a Database Only backup on a weekly basis.
3. Plugins only
The next three types of backups are self-explanatory. A Plugins Only backup backs up all of your plugin files, regardless of whether or not they are active.
When BackupBuddy is finished, the backup's zip file download displays all of the contents. Each plugin will be housed in its own directory.
When to Use a Plugins Only Backup: Running a Plugins Only Backup before updating plugins is incredibly important because prior versions of the plugins will be kept in case you need to reverse back.
4. Themes only
A backup for only themes is exactly what it sounds like... a backup of all the themes you've installed on your site, whether or not they're active.
When BackupBuddy is finished, the backup's zip file download displays all of the contents. There will be a folder for each theme you install on your site.
The backup contains all of the theme folders.
When should you use a Themes Only Backup? This form of backup is incredibly useful to run before updating themes because it preserves prior versions of the theme in case you need to reverse back.
5. Media only backup
A backup of all the media files you've submitted to your website via the Media Library is known as a Media Only backup.
When BackupBuddy is finished, the backup's zip file download displays all of the contents.
Files will be grouped into folders by year and month because your Media Library is organised by date.
Conclusion
With WordPress backup plugin, BackupBuddy, can back up, restore, and migrate your WordPress site to a new server or domain.
With OneDrive, Dropbox, and Google Drive integration, you can safely store your backups off-site, or utilise BackupBuddy Stash, our secure, remote backup storage destination (you receive 1GB free with your BackupBuddy subscription!)
