How to back up a WordPress website.
Everyone’s heard of WordPress – it’s one of the most popular content management systems in the world
But few know how to back up a WordPress website. Like facts and figures? 70 million new posts are created on WordPress each month and 1.1 million domains are registered every six months. 409 million people view more than 23.6 billion pages every 30 days. And, on average, there are 36,200 lines of code in every WordPress theme. That’s a lot of data.
This kind of global presence and popularity makes the ubiquitous platform an irresistible target for hackers looking to damage sites for their version of fun – or to gather confidential information for more illicit purposes – as this news story from 2017 shows.
The security risks of a WordPress site
The security flaw in WordPress’s blogging software allowed hackers to attack and deface tens of thousands of sites. They were able to edit posts and change titles but left unrepaired, those devious types would have been able to insert code, text and links… all very damaging indeed.
But it’s not unusual – 90% of infected platforms are WordPress sites. Many of these problems are due to user error, a lack of cybersecurity knowledge, and outdated versions of WordPress. All this shows that keeping on top of your cybersecurity is an ongoing need. It's essential to know how to back up a WordPress site.
What you can do to protect your site
It can be devastating to lose your site data. Every post, comment, link, and feedback is on there; all your plugins, themes, and code files. Hours of work – the community you’ve built – can disappear in an instant. That’s why it’s so important to back up a WordPress site.
How to back up a WordPress website
When it comes to how to back up a WordPress website, there are three main options:
- Use backup software
- Sync your site to your server
- Copy files to your desktop
Backup software
Software can be installed as a WordPress plugin to protect your data.
Popular options include:
These can be great as a simple option, but they’re not necessarily a complete solution and may be complicated to use. For example, some backup software only back up certain content. Another concern is knowing how to retrieve data that is backed up. Where does it go? How to get your site up and running again?
What’s more, some have to be configured to work, which requires a certain amount of IT proficiency.
Sync your site to your server
This option takes a little technical know-how but may be more reliable than a backup software if done right. WinSCP is one application you can use for this purpose.
Copy files to your desktop
This option takes the least technical proficiency but it is the painstakingly slow option – not only when copying the content in the first place, but in re-establishing the site if it does crash. This is definitely not the best option when thinking about how to back up a WordPress website.
The easier choice? Let Ketchup do it for you
We want to help every client protect their website, their business and their integrity: it’s not just an issue that affects major organisations – everyone using the Internet is potentially at risk.
WordPress tends to act swiftly to provide patches and other solutions when such vulnerabilities are discovered – but that is little consolation to those people whose sites have already fallen prey to hackers. That’s why we believe it’s far better to be prepared and protected – prevent the attack, rather than deal with the fallout.
Extra security precautions
Your WordPress admin area is normally only protected by a password. Securing your website with additional features such as two-factor authentication helps to secure your logins, so that more than one link in the chain needs to be broken before an unwelcome visitor can access your site. It’s done by adding a second requirement (usually a code that will be sent via email) giving you an additional layer of protection… and in the light of recent news stories, this extra vigilance makes perfect sense, which is why we’ve made it part of our portfolio of services. In fact, we do a lot more than back up a WordPress site - we make it almost impenetrable.
Keeping you safe with KetchupProtect
We’ve developed an advanced WordPress Protection Package exclusively for our clients, designed to maintain the security of your site and ultimately give you peace of mind. KetchupProtect incorporates a whole raft of security and protection features that aren’t usually part of the WordPress platform, including:
- 2-Factor Authentication – users must enter both a password AND a secondary code sent to your email. Users need both the password and code to successfully log in to a user account. Two-factor authentication adds an extra layer of WordPress security to verify it’s actually you logging in and not someone who gained access (or even guessed) your password.
- Google ReCAPTCHA – this adds an extra layer of protection to your most vulnerable pages such as the WP login, user registration and comments.
- Protection against bad users – this feature limits the number of failed login attempts and locks out bad users.
- Enhanced admin security – this makes the administrative area inaccessible at certain times and alternates the URL for that area so that attackers won’t know where to look.
- 404 detection – this identifies the high number of 404 errors a bot generates when it scans your site and locks out the IP addresses which produce these.
- File change detection and comparison – the security plugin will detect file changes that can be tell-tale signs of hacking and assess whether the change is malicious.
- Malware scanning – scheduled scans check for malware and then combat and remove any found.
- User action logging – tracking when users log in, edit content and log out to help identify suspicious behaviour.
Choose KetchupProtect, and you’ll benefit from all the above safeguards as well as plenty of other features. You’ll also have peace of mind that we will check your website every week to ensure all plugins and software are current and make regular backups.
Protect your website, and you protect your business.
Get in touch today
For more information about how we can make it much harder for the hackers, please get in touch on 0115 671 3868. We’re here to help you stay safe.