To Prevent Website Hacking – Back up your WordPress Website

As we mentioned in the first article in this series on WordPress website security, hacking is on the rise; either due to simple malice or for profit. Unfortunately, knowing why you’ve been hacked means little in the face of the damage done. So, the question becomes, what is the best way to prevent a hacker from damaging the website you’ve worked so hard to build?

WordPress security begins with website backup

It goes without saying that most of us buy insurance for the things we hold precious; our cars, our boats, our homes, our lives (and wouldn’t you just feel like dying if your precious website disappeared?). Backing up your website is just like insurance, offering security and the peace of mind that goes with knowing your site is protected (or, in this case – recoverable). Begin backing up your website immediately!!!

If you don’t back up your site, and you lose it (due to malware / mistakes / broken plugins or updates / hacking / etc), what would you do? For most of us, we wouldn’t be able to easily recreate our website (or really – who wants to, even if you CAN).

What is a website backup?

Website backup is, essentially, a complete copy of your entire website, including data files, theme settings, media gallery, and content, to be used to reconstruct your website in case of disaster; either natural or manmade. This can be accomplished through the use of an automated plugin or through the services of your host.

It might also be helpful to discuss what a backup is NOT. It is NOT a backup if …

1. It’s out of date (Great! I can recover all my blog posts from … 1992. Oops)
2. It’s not easy to RESTORE (i.e., word docs scattered throughout your hard drive is NOT a backup).
3. It’s not automatic (You don’t want to have to DO anything to backup your website – it should be automatic so you don’t have to think about it. You have enough things to do).

Please, please, PLEASE do NOT think it won’t happen to you because it probably will, especially if you’re not ACTIVELY working to prevent it (remember that insurance analogy above? The moment you don’t have it is always the moment you need it!)

How to backup your WordPress site

There are two critical steps required to effectively back up a WordPress website and, when I say CRITICAL I mean that you must do BOTH of these things.

1. Database Backup – This involves protecting the pages and posts, or content, you create for your website. If you regularly update your website (i.e., if you blog, change things around or add content on a regular or semi-regular basis), we suggest doing this daily.
2. Site Backup – This involves protecting all the hard work you’ve done to make your site look stunning, including the theme and all the hard customization work you’ve done. We suggest doing this weekly.

What is the best WordPress backup tool?

The best way to backup your site is to use a “set it and forget it” backup solution that is installed on your website, usually a high quality WordPress plugin that does all of the work for you. Here are a few of our faves.

• Backup Buddy – is easily the favorite solution around here. It can store backups in a multitude of places, including your server, Amazon S3, Dropbox, or even email (and more). Backup buddy requires a yearly license fee to use. Your web designer may also have a developers license, in which case they can install it without you having to buy a copy of the license.
• Vaultpress.com – is another quality backup solution. This is another monthly fee service that will backup, help with restores, and also do security scans for you.
• IMPORTANT POINTS about backing things up – If you set your backups to go to your server, make sure you limit the number of backups (after 30 backups or so, it starts getting crowded!). You don’t want to take up tons of server space and get shut down. ALSO – make sure you don’t back up the backups (your files will get HUGE) and, once again, your host will likely shut you down.

Stay tuned for Part 3 of this series on WordPress website security, where we will offer some simple steps to prevent website hacking.