Why Back-Up WordPress

If you have a WordPress website then you’ll have seen in the backend that updates are nearly always available. It also advises that you should back-up WordPress.  This article and video covers how to back-up your WordPress site before attempting any updates or major changes. Because if you have no back up and something goes wrong, then all your website is gone forever.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix, right?

It’s easy to be lulled into a false sense of security. The site works fine, so why bother with updates?

WordPress use has exploded and according to WordPress, over 60 million people use WordPress to power their websites. Unfortunately it’s also become target for hackers, determined to break innocent websites. So the community of developers who created WordPress, themes and plugins that you use with it, continually improve their software and release what are called updates. It’s a simple click of an ‘update’ button to perform.

Sadly, the importance of security and updates doesn’t play importance with most website owners, until it’s too late and they’ve been hacked and their site breaks and they discover there are no back-ups to restore the site from. Which means they’re faced with the cost of having to rebuild their website from scratch. Rather annoying when it’s avoidable.

Step away from the UPDATE button

By clicking ‘update’ seems a very simple way to keep updated and mostly that works with no ill-effects.

Sometimes, however, it breaks the site and if you haven’t got a backup to restore to, then you can spend days and weeks as well as hundreds if not thousands trying to get it restored. And all from a seemingly harmless one-click.

If you had a back up, then the site can be restored. Maybe not by you, but someone who is WordPress savvy could. But only if there is a backup.

Here’s a video of what I do before doing any updates.

Update

Since shooting this video, Mozilla have removed the Fireftp add on.

Filezilla and Cyberduck are alternatives to what FireFTP did.