Last week we discussed some WordPress security tips A backup system should form part of any WordPress security strategy you have in place, so that if anything unfortunate happens, you can restore a previous version quickly.
Whilst you should have an automated WordPress backup solution in place, having multiple backup systems is something we strongly recommend. This way if one of your backup solutions fails, you have a secondary backup system to call upon.
The guide below details how to manually backup WordPress using cPanel
STEP 1:
Login to your cPanel account
Navigate to your login page for cPanel. This is normally your domain name or IP address followed by /cpanel
e.g. http://yourdomainname.com/cpanel
STEP 2:
Under the files section, click on the backup Wizard Icon
STEP 3:
Click on the “Backup” button
STEP 4:
Under the “Select Partial Backup” header, click on the “Home Directory” link
STEP 5:
Click on the “Home Directory” button to download a compressed copy of your home directory.
Depending upon the size of your site, this may take a little while
STEP 6:
Now that you have a copy of your home directory on your local machine, the next step is to download a copy of your WordPress database
First click on the “Go Back” link to get to the previous page
STEP 7:
Under the “Select Partial Backup” header, click on the “MySQL Databases” link
STEP 8:
Finally, click on the link for your WordPress database, to download a copy to your local machine.
STEP 9:
Now that you have a local copy of your WordPress files, we recommend that you archive them in a suitable location.
You may even want to upload them to an offsite data storage provider such as Dropbox
SUMMERY
If you’ve followed all the steps in the guide, you will now have a copy of your WordPress files and database.
