How to Backup your WordPress Website

Publish Date - July 6, 2021
Author by Smackcoders

Blog
How to Backup your WordPress Website

WordPress backup is making a copy that you can restore when something goes wrong. Your post, comment, link are there in your WordPress database. If your database gets corrupted then the data inside it will get erased. If you have a proper WordPress backup, then you don’t lose any data. You can restore it quickly when it went wrong. You can restore the data manually and by using plugins. This can be done by two methods - cPanel and SFTP. Let's discuss the methods here.

What does a WordPress backup contain

The WordPress site has two components: First your WordPress files. Which contains Theme/plugin files, media, etc… This helps to provide additional functionality and gives structure to your website.
Secondly, the MySQL database which is for storing the blog posts, comments, links, etc. These two components make the WordPress website. If we take WordPress backup which contains the entire data which is present in the database.

Manual Method for WordPress Backup

1. For manual method of WordPress backup, first you need to take backup for the files and database. Files get stored inside the web host server. Via cPanel and FTP you can access them.

2. Database backup is possible through phpmyadmin. It also needs the host account credentials. If you do not have cPanel access, then you can install phpmyadmin.

If this setup is ready, then you can start your WordPress backup. Before starting, you have to create a folder. In order to store the backuped data.

WordPress Backup Via cPanel

This is one of the easy method for WordPress backup. For this, all you need is your host login credentials.

First, log in to your hosting account and goto cPanel. This is the first page after your login.
Then move to File Manager, which leads you to the home directory.
Next, you just locate your WordPress directory and this is the folder that you want to backup.
Directly, you can’t download the WordPress directory in the file manager. You have to compress it and it is not that much complicated.
Just click on the WordPress directory and choose compress from the menu bar. After that, you need to choose the compression type e.g zip, Tar, etc. From that type choose zip.
Then click the files that you want to compress and wait for the process to complete. Once the process completed, your zip file will automatically be saved on the server.
Now, select the compressed file and click on the download from the menu. Finally, choose a location and save your backup.

Backup via SFTP

This WordPress backup process is by using a file manager like FileZilla or Transmit. This file manager is easy to use. For this method, you have to install the application on your pc. After installation, use your SFTP login credentials from your hosting account.

Then login to your file manager and give the details of your website. That contains your nickname, your website URL, FTP username and password. Also, you need to change the port number to 2222.

Once you logged in, you will see all your website files. You just select the file you want to backup >> Right click >>” Download selected items ”.

After downloading, check whether the files are zipped up or not. Then give a name to that file. This is the manual method for wordpress backup.

Why WordPress is the Best Platform for Blogging

The best platform for blogging is WordPress because this helps to make our own website. Blogging refers to writing something that you want to show to everyone. You can say that it is to share your thoughts or share about your business. It is a tool to share original content on the internet. WordPress is a popular way to create our own website or blog. It is a free open-source content management system. Without any code, it can manage your website. WordPress is the easiest and powerful way to create a blog. You can create and manage your website using this powerful platform. This can be done in minutes and can make changes to your website.

What does blog mean?

A blog is a journal that displays information with the post appearing at the top. This is the place where the writer shares their views about an individual subject. Also, Blogging makes your customer up-to-date and builds a communication with customer. It is also a web page tool to share content, post, link on the internet. Blogs may have some more features like posting a short video that explains the blog. Use the WordPress as a platform for blogging and create an opportunity for an individual to make their own website.

Platform for Blogging

WordPress is one of the best platform for blogging because of its plugin supply. Plugins drive people to create blogs and business websites in WordPress. The major factors of blogging is to get more attention from your target audience. Through this blogging customers may get the services and products from your website. To increase the website traffic, rank and to get connected with the target audience is the main aim. You can attract your target audience by using a themes. To make your site as a good looking and attracting website, WordPress is one of the powerful tool.

WP is a free installation platform for blogging. It is helpful for web designers and programmers and it is a secure platform to run a website. WordPress is a platform that uses a high-quality code so that it is popular than other platforms. Also, it is one of the top-ranked platforms. Know about the 30 important reasons to choose WordPress. For writing the blog, you use WordPress editor and you can create your blog. For changing your blog’s look, you can use the theme and change it. Adding more functionalities, you can use install the plugins and use them. Also track your readers with the colorful graphs. Like where they are from and how they found you. You can make your site more popular with WordPress. Having a vast features make WordPress as a Best Platform for Blogging.

How to Build & Develop WordPress Websites for Business

If you are thinking on how to build your website for your business using a WordPress website, so that you can establish an online presence and find new customers on the internet, this blog post can be helpful. For novice or non-techy person, starting a website can be stressful, and difficult. But in this 21st century, that is a bygone. With WordPress on the scene, building websites businesses have become easy, and you can do it all by yourself without hiring a developer. In this article, let us check how to build and develop WordPress websites for business.

Before building a website for your business, let’s see what is the best platform to make a business website. There are many open source content management system, refers to as CMS that you can use to build your business website without touching a line of code. Many people, especially the beginners or non-techy people have made mistake in choosing the wrong platform when starting to make a business website. Luckily, we have put this article together to help you so you would not be making that mistake again.

As earlier mentioned, a content management system (CMS) is a software that facilitates website building and creating published content online without writing a code. There are many content management system (CMS) for building websites for business including WordPress (WordPress.org, and WordPress.com), Joomla, Magneto, Drupal, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and Shopify, etc without requiring coding. It makes building websites easy and simple. Among the CMS lists, WordPress is the most popular and powerful CMS platform over the world. It powers 43.3% of all websites on the internet including millions of small business websites all over the world. Refer Manaferra’s WordPress Statistics 2022 for more WordPress stats.

When it comes to WordPress, there are two types available. WordPress.com is a hosted solution, while WordPress.org is known as a self-hosted WordPress. WordPress.org is recommended to create your website. Although it’s an open-source software used as the CMS for blogs and websites, it’s not useful unless you pay for a hosting account that the software will use to function. WordPress.com is free and it handles the web hosting for you. No need to pay for hosting, download software, or manage a web server. All these are taking care of, however, you’ll be required to create an account on WordPress.com and many website features are paid upgrades. It is easier to start, but offers less freedom.

Meanwhile, we are choosing WordPress.org for our case. Since it’s free, easy and give you instant access to all WordPress features. Likewise, you’re in control, and you can customizeas you desire. It provides the easiest way to create a free website or blog. It’s a powerful hosting platform for you to grow your business.

What makes WordPress perfect for building websites is that it gives you access to hundreds of pre-made website templates, extensions, and add-ons. While you are right on your computer, you can make almost any kind of website you desire without learning to code.

As the most preferred CMS platform, WordPress boasts of the following,

It’s open source, with several plugins to make it suitable for your liking.
It’s free – you pay no dime to set up your website.
It’s the ultimate solution for website building.
It’s extra flexible – can run any type of website from business, to construction, agriculture, art, and so on.
It’s fast, optimized, and secure.
It’s SEO-ready – makes promotion easier having mentioned that, let’s consider how to easily build and develop WordPress website for businesses.

Find here the 25 most important reasons to use WordPress.

Setting up Your Business Website

The first step to make a business website, just like building a house where you need to get a land before you start building, likewise, for you to build a website for your business, you need to pick a domain name. Domain name will be your website’s name. In addition to this, you need a website hosting too. The host will be home of your website where all your files will be stored. We have many hosting companies selling both domain and hosting, and some of the leading ones include bluehost, namecheap, hostgator, godaddy, hostinger, and so on. Buy your domain with a hosting plan.

Based on recommendation, Bluehost is preferable to set up your website. As an officially recommended WordPress hosting provider, and one of the largest hosting companies in the world, Bluehost’s domain is cheap (from $2.95/month), easy to use and beginner-friendly. It is also a web host that’s optimized for WordPress and will make sure that your website operates with no hiccups. Besides, you get a domain name for free.

Choosing a Domain Name for Your Business Website

Domain names are vital to the success of your website as they are pointer to your business identification. Therefore, you need to take your time to brainstorm on choosing an ideal domain name for your business. Consider this fact, there are nearly 2 billion websites online on the web (at the time of writing). Meaning, it can be quite challenging staying original.

Possibly get a notepad, and write. After culling down your domain name, you need to visit the domain registrar website you select in a new browser window, domains. Click on it and the next page will lead you to where you will be asked to enter your account information such as name, address, email, etc. Since a domain name represents your business, or brand name, it is a good idea to choose your website’s name (and thus your domain name) around either the name of your business, or organization (the most realistic approach) or a phrase that’s associated with the niche you belong to, but with some added words for better brand building.

Overall, a good domain name should be:

Brandable – associated with your business, that readily comes to mind and not forgettable with unique sounding. All over the market, there’s none like it.
Easy to memorize: that readily comes to mind.
Short, and not lengthen.
Simple to type and hard to mix up – you don’t want people to be cracking their brains on how to spell your site’s name.
Including niche-related keywords – for example, if your business deals with food, it would be cool to have “food” somewhere in the name of the site; it applies the same in all industries as well.

There are few quick tools to find out if the domain name you’re interested in is available or not.There are few quick tools to find out if the domain name you’re interested in is available or not.

Installing WordPress

After paying for your domain name, and hosting, cpanel details would be sent to your inbox. This comprises of tools you need to build your WordPress website. Login into your cpanel, and select the Softaculous Apps Installer icon for registrar like namecheap. From there click on the WordPress logo and click to install the app.

While you still on this page, you need to fill out your WordPress installation details. There is a dropdown to choose the domain – enter the domain you wish to install WordPress on. After this, you specify the root folder for installation. You have an empty directory field which comes as a default. Leaving it this way makes WordPress to assume you’re using WordPress on your website, for instance, yourdomain.com. Leave the database Name as the default. Put in your WordPress admin username and password and fill the Site Settings for security. Hit Install when you’re ready.

This is where Softaculous now helps you with the installation. It takes up the task of running the installer with the details you provided and provide a success message on completion, along with a link to your site and another link to your WordPress admin area. Click on the new link and login to your dash to start work on your website.

WP Admin Area

Aftеr successfully installing уоur WordPress, аnd уоu саn access thе Admin area bу visiting thе wp-admin directory in уоur web browser. You’ll bе asked tо provide thе login details уоu submitted whilе installing thе WordPress app. Aftеr then, you’ll gаin access thе WordPress dashboard. It iѕ inside thе WordPress dashboard, уоu hаvе a WordPress website administrative area оf a known аѕ WP Admin Area.

Thе WordPress admin area iѕ thе administration center оf a WordPress powered website. Administration iѕ synonymous tо management. In оthеr words, thiѕ iѕ whеrе уоu manage оr control. Aѕ аn administrator, уоu hаvе full access tо аll thе sections within thе WordPress Admin Area. Althоugh thеrе аrе оthеr users roles ѕuсh аѕ editor, contributor, оr author, but thеу hаvе limited access tо thе admin area. Othеrѕ like thе users with thе subscriber role, hаvе access оnlу tо thеir profile page inside thе admin area. There is the toolbar or admin bar inside the administration dashboard. This offer you access to numerous administrative functions. The main navigation that provides access to most of the WordPress management tools is located at the left side.

You also have the work area where you can write, edit, and delete posts as well as adjust settings at the middle of the dashboard.

WP Content

WP Content is the main central part of WordPress folders. Why is WP-content important? A question may arise. Since the files, data and other things you upload or import into WordPress ends up here. You can get back the lost things from this folder. What does the WP-content folder have? Why is everyone saying that it is the heart? It stores the main content like plugin, theme and uploads. It also helps you to fix important errors.

WP Media

What comes to mind when you mentioned Media is video, and photos. Inside your WordPress admin sidebar, there is a Media tab which is used to manage user uploads including images, audio, video, and other files. Under the Media menu, there are two categories. The first category contains the media library with the lists of all your files. All these files can also be edited and deleted from the library as you prefer. Also, you can view and manage all of your existing media files, such as images, audio, videos, and documents. The second category is Add New, which allows users to upload new files. Moreover, you can upload media your files while writing a post or page.

Themes

A WordPress Theme is a ready-made layout created for WordPress. As a collection of files that work together to produce a graphical interface, you can customize, or modify to suit your website.

There are themes developed to make your website building easy, faster, and intuitive. Building a WordPress website can be done in a day with WordPress themes. Even a novice with no technical knowledge can create his website and makes it look attractive using a website theme. User creating his website can choose from different themes available on WordPress dashboard with ease and include different features with a drag-n-drop feature in order to develop a website. In addition to this, it makes the website user-friendly. One can simply select a theme that is useful, and fit into your line of business, and it also prevents the need to buy new themes for every website. All the necessary requirements are seamlessly met within short time.

Understand that there are free and premium themes. There are platforms where you can purchase premium themes. You can find the perfect WordPress theme for any type of industry or business size that you are. Whether you need a creative WordPress theme that leaves visitors in awe, with impressive visuals and stunning effects, or you are looking for a perfect Portfolio WordPress theme that suits you best, showcasing your job as a photographer, a gallery, an illustrator, a videographer, a web designer, a web developer, a marketer, an architect, a small ad agency, a musician, an instructor, a coach or a service provider such as a carpenter, an interior designer or a babysitter, a WordPress theme is the best to choose. A theme designed from scratch can save you time and help you enjoy your freedom without leaving your visitors disappointed.

Plugins

A content management system supports some piece of software containing a group of functions to further enhance the look or functionality of your website. This piece of software is referred to as plugins. They can be added to a WordPress website to further extend the functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites.

As earlier mentioned, CMS delivers the power of building a website without knowing a line of code. Likewise, plugins make it easier for users to add features to their website without knowing a single line of code. They are written in the PHP programming language and integrate effortlessly with WordPress.

There are thousands of WordPress plugins available for free inside the WordPress dashboard. Check the one that suit you and read more from its documentation and demo.