Taking a backup of your WordPress blog is a good thing, but often people do mistakes in this job also. There are few points to be kept in mind while taking backups. If you are also using WP for blogging, then you should also know about these tips. Following are the most common mistakes that are committed while taking WordPress backups. Try to avoid these mistakes which are listed not in any particular order:
- Not Taking backup Regularly: Few people are not aware of taking backups and they just ignore this aspect feeling that it is the task of some pro. Don’t be one among such people. Take the backups regularly.
- Not Taking Complete Backup: Even if you are taking a backup, it will not be of much use if it not complete backup. So, make sure that you are taking complete backup of all files so that you can make use of them, when necessary. Even if one file is missing, then it might not be the same which you want to see.
- Don’t Rely on Automatic Backups: WordPress is one such lovely thing which can be automated for our convenience. You need not take manual backup all the time. Just install necessary plugins and make necessary settings. It will take backup of your WordPress automatically. Few hosting services are also offering the feature of regular automatic backups. If you are using manual backups, you might be at risk when you have forgotten or when you are away from work.
- Not following a particular schedule: It will not be of any use, if your backup is of older days. You need to take backup of WordPress at proper frequency. You should keep in mind that different parts of the WP blog or site will change at different frequencies. If you are having large site, you should split the backup depending on the update frequency.
- Relying only on Hosting Provider’s backup: Most of the hosting companies offer backup services. It is good to utilize their services, but it is not good to depend only on their services. You should also have alternative sources of backup in case any problem arises with the backups by hosting company. Sometimes, your hosting company may not be able to give complete archives of backup, or sometimes they might get hacked or they might shut down their services. In such cases, your backups will be at risk. So, it is better to take alternative backups apart from having hosting company’s backup.
- Storing Backup on Hosting Account only: It is better to store the backup on some other places also, because if the hosting account gets hacked, your backup will also get hacked. In case of server crashes also, you might be losing all the data. Hence, you should not store the backup only on hosting account.
- Not securing the stored backup: Whenever you are taking backups and storing them, make sure that you are following secured methods. The data present on your backups might be sensitive and valuable. Hence it is necessary to make the backup secure.