Which WordPress Files Should You Backup? (+ How to Do It)

Backing up your WordPress site is one of the most important things you can do as a website owner. Without a proper backup strategy, you risk losing all your hard work due to a server crash, hacking attempt, or accidental deletion.

But with thousands of files and a large database, it can be tricky to know exactly which WordPress files you need to back up. You don‘t want to waste time and storage space saving unnecessary files.

In this comprehensive guide, we‘ll cover everything you need to know about creating effective WordPress backups, including:

Why WordPress backups are essential
The best ways to back up a WordPress site
Which specific WordPress files and folders to include in your backups
How often you should run backups for optimal protection
Step-by-step instructions for manually backing up WordPress
How to automate WordPress backups for ease and convenience

After reading this guide, you‘ll have the knowledge to set up a rock-solid WordPress backup solution that could save your site if disaster strikes. Let‘s get started!

Why Backups Are Essential for WordPress Sites

It‘s easy to think your WordPress site is safe and nothing bad will ever happen to it. But the truth is, website disasters can strike any time, and they often hit without warning.

Some common threats that can damage or destroy a WordPress site include:

Server crashes: Hosting servers are complex systems that can experience hardware failure and go offline suddenly. This can erase hosted sites and their data.
Hacker attacks: Sites get hacked every day. Hackers can delete content, inject malware, or completely take over your site.
Accidental deletions: A mistaken click in the WordPress dashboard can wipe out important pages, posts, plugins, themes, and other site elements.
Software failures: A problem with a theme, plugin, or WordPress core can cause widespread site errors and data corruption.
Natural disasters: Fire, floods, and other natural catastrophes can destroy the physical servers hosting your site.

Without backups, recovering from any of these threats could mean completely rebuilding your site from scratch and losing traffic and revenue while you scramble to get back online.

But with comprehensive WordPress backups, you can quickly restore your entire site exactly as it was before disaster struck.

Backups give you the power to "turn back time" on your site. And performing regular backups helps ensure you always have a recent version you can revert to in an emergency.

Simply put: Not backing up your WordPress site is risky business. Don‘t gamble with your hard work and livelihood.

3 Options for Backing Up WordPress

Now that you‘re convinced of the importance of WordPress backups, let‘s explore your options for creating and managing them. Here are the 3 main approaches:

1. WordPress Backup Plugins

The easiest way to back up a WordPress site is by using an automated backup plugin. We recommend this method for most users.

Backup plugins add backup capabilities directly within your WordPress dashboard. They can schedule automatic backups to run daily, weekly, or monthly.

And they give you options like backing up to local storage, cloud storage, email, FTP, and more. Popular free WordPress backup plugins include UpdraftPlus, BackWPup, and Jetpack.

Paid backup plugins like BlogVault, BackupBuddy, and Duplicator Pro offer premium features like support, encryption, and unlimited storage. Paid plugins start around $80 per year.

2. Manual Backups

You can also manually back up WordPress by exporting your database and downloading the important files via FTP.

This takes more technical skill but offers greater flexibility. You‘ll learn how to do manual WordPress backups later in this guide.

The downside of manual backups is they must be run and managed completely by you. That means remembering to back up regularly and storing the files yourself.

3. Web Host Backups

Some web hosting providers offer their own backup solutions for WordPress sites hosted on their servers.

For example, HostGator, Bluehost, and WPX Hosting either include backups in certain hosting plans or offer them as add-on services.

The main benefit of using your web host‘s backups is convenience – the backups happen automatically on their servers. But these backup tools are often basic and have size limits.

Third-party backup plugins usually offer far more advanced features and options. So even if you have a hosting provider backup, we still recommend also implementing your own backup solution.

Which WordPress Files and Folders to Include

Now let‘s get into the specifics of what you need to back up in WordPress.

A full WordPress backup consists of two key components:

The WordPress file system
The MySQL database

Let‘s look at which files and folders you should grab from the file system:

WordPress Core Files

These files power the basic functionality of any WordPress site. They reside in the main site root and the /wp-admin/ and /wp-includes/ folders.

wp-config.php: Contains your site‘s core configuration
.htaccess: Controls some site functionality and security
/wp-admin folder: The WordPress dashboard and admin tools
/wp-includes folder: The bulk of WordPress‘ core code

You don‘t need to modify core files yourself, but backing them up provides a foundation to rebuild your site if needed.

wp-content Folder

This contains user-generated files specific to your site. The most important contents to back up include:

/wp-content/themes: Your currently active theme plus any other themes
/wp-content/plugins: All installed plugins
/wp-content/uploads: Images, documents, and other media uploads

Backing up wp-content captures all the key plugins, themes, and assets that make your site your own. Without it, your restored site would be missing what makes it unique.

Other Potential Files and Folders

Here are a few other files and folders you may want to include in your WordPress backups:

Custom plugins/themes: If you have any custom-developed plugins, themes, or functionality not stored in wp-content, back them up too.
Modified files: Any WordPress files you manually edited like wp-config.php or .htaccess.
Cached files: Plugins like W3 Total Cache generate cache files you may want to backup.
Extra folders: Some plugins create new folders outside wp-content you may want to grab like Envira Gallery image sets.

The WordPress Database

In addition to the file system, you need to back up the MySQL database WordPress relies on. This database powers:

All your site‘s content like blog posts and pages
Users, comments, and site activity
Plugin and theme settings and data
Menu structure, widgets, and other configuration

Failing to include the database in backups means you‘ll restore an empty shell with no dynamic content or functionality.

So in summary, a complete WordPress backup means grabbing:

WordPress core files
The wp-content folder
Any other key files like wp-config.php
The MySQL database

This gives you everything you need to fully restore your WordPress site.

Now let‘s look at backup frequency – how often you should run these backups.

How Often Should You Back Up Your WordPress Site?

Your WordPress backup frequency should strike a balance between security and practicality.

Ideally, you want to back up as often as possible to minimize potential data loss. But frequent large backups eat storage space, bandwidth, and server resources.

Here are general guidelines on smart WordPress backup frequency:

Monthly Full Backups

Do a complete backup of all WordPress files and the database once a month. This gives you recovery points in time to revert to if needed.

Monthly full backups are essential. Schedule them for early in the month so you don‘t miss doing one.

Weekly Partial Backups

Weekly backups of just your essential wp-content files and database strike a nice balance for many sites.

This covers your ever-changing assets, content, and data without overtaxing your resources.

Daily Database Backups

Your database can change frequently, so backing it up daily provides maximum protection.

Databases are relatively small, so daily backups are easy for most hosts to accommodate.

Before Core/Plugin/Theme Updates

Always do a quick backup before updating WordPress core, plugins, or themes. This lets you roll back if an update causes problems.

Before Making Big Changes

Back up right before making major edits to your site, like altering the page structure, renaming the domain, or migrating hosts.

Again, this gives you a restore point to fall back on if the changes go awry.

How to Manually Back Up WordPress Files and Database

Now let‘s get into the nuts and bolts of manually backing up your WordPress site. This will teach you exactly what gets backed up and how the process works.

Even if you end up using an automated backup plugin, understanding manual backups is useful in case you ever need to do one yourself.

Backing Up WordPress Files

Let‘s start with manually downloading your WordPress file system via FTP.

First, connect to your web host‘s server via an FTP client like FileZilla. Log in with your hosting account credentials.

Next, navigate to your web root folder on the server. This is where you should see folders like wp-admin, wp-content, and wp-includes.

Now you need to copy these folders and files to your local computer. To do so:

On your local computer, create a new folder called "wordpress-backup" or something similar. This will hold your backed-up files.
Open your FTP client and connect to your hosting server if you aren‘t already.
Browse to the root folder of your WordPress installation on the server.
Select and copy all the folders/files you want to back up like wp-admin, wp-content, etc.
Paste the copied folders and files into your local "wordpress-backup" folder you created.
Repeat this copy/paste process until you‘ve grabbed a complete backup of the WordPress file system.

And that‘s it — you‘ve just manually backed up all your key WordPress files locally via FTP.

Tip: Instead of FTP, you can also download WordPress files using cPanel‘s File Manager. Log into cPanel and navigate to your public_html folder. Then download folders like wp-content to your computer.

Now let‘s look at manually backing up your MySQL database.

Backing Up Your MySQL Database

WordPress stores all of its data, content, and settings in a MySQL database. If you want to fully backup WordPress, you need to back up this database.

Here‘s how to export and download your MySQL database as a SQL file:

Log in to cPanel on your web host and go to the PhpMyAdmin tool (usually under Databases).
In PhpMyAdmin, select your WordPress database from the panel on the left.
Choose the Export tab.
Leave all settings as default and scroll down to the bottom.
Click the Export button to export your database.
Save the downloaded .SQL file on your computer in your backups folder.

Now you have a complete backup of your database in a portable SQL file.

To restore your site, you would import this SQL file back into the database to rebuild the database.

And that‘s it! With these steps, you now have a manual backup of both the full WordPress file system and MySQL database downloaded onto your local computer or another safe storage location.

Manually downloading backups takes more effort than automated plugins. But it gives you full control and works even if plugins are unavailable.

Next let‘s look at how to make backups much easier with backup plugins.

Using Backup Plugins to Automate WordPress Backups

Manually backing up WordPress requires downloading database exports and file system copies. Doing this regularly takes significant dedication.

That‘s why we recommend most users automate backups with a backup plugin. These plugins add backup capabilities right to your WordPress dashboard.

They allow you to schedule automatic backups on any frequency. Backups can be downloaded to your computer, saved remotely to cloud storage, or even emailed to yourself.

Let‘s look at how to set up automated backups using the popular free UpdraftPlus plugin.

Installing and Activating UpdraftPlus

First install and activate the UpdraftPlus WordPress Backup Plugin. To do so:

In your WordPress dashboard, go to Plugins » Add New.
Search for "UpdraftPlus Backup" and click Install Now.
After installation completes, click Activate Plugin.

UpdraftPlus is now active in your WordPress site.

Configuring Your Backup Settings

Next, you need to configure UpdraftPlus‘ settings to get your backups running smoothly:

Go to the UpdraftPlus page under the Settings menu.
Under File backup, select which WordPress files/folders to back up. We recommend backing up at minimum the WordPress files and wp-content folder.
Under Database backup, make sure both the database and database tables are selected.
Under Remote storage, choose where to save your backups like Google Drive, Dropbox, Amazon S3, etc. Add your account credentials.
Scroll down further and under Scheduling, choose how often to run backups. Such as daily for the database and weekly for files. Click Save Changes.

UpdraftPlus is now ready to start automatically backing up your WordPress site on the schedule you chose.

Running and Downloading Backups

You can manually run a backup anytime by going to the UpdraftPlus page and clicking Backup Now.

Your scheduled backups will run automatically in the background based on the frequency you chose.

All backup files are saved to the remote storage locations you connected like Google Drive or Dropbox. You can view and download your backups from inside your accounts at those services.

And that‘s the beauty of automated WordPress backup plugins — after the initial setup, the plugin handles running and saving backups for you on autopilot.

Storing Your Backups Securely

Whether you use automated WordPress backups or manually create them, an important consideration is where you store them.

Your backups do you no good if they disappear when your site goes down! Follow these tips for secure backup storage:

Use remote cloud storage like Google Drive or Dropbox rather than storing locally where backups could be lost alongside your site.
Encrypt backups before uploading to the cloud to prevent unauthorized access. Many backup plugins support encryption.
Use multiple storage locations like two different cloud services for redundancy in case one storage provider fails.
Download backups to your computer periodically as another copy separate from your cloud storage. Store them on an external hard drive or devices kept safely off-site.
Test restoring from backups regularly to verify their integrity and your ability to recover your site from them.

Following these tips will ensure you have fresh, working backups available, even if disaster strikes your primary site and its hosting provider.

Backup Your WordPress Site Before It‘s Too Late

As you can now see, regularly backing up your WordPress site is absolutely essential to avoid losing your hard work and investments.

Accidents happen all the time, so don‘t wait until it‘s too late — get a WordPress backup solution in place immediately.

We recommend most users automate WordPress backups with a trusted plugin like UpdraftPlus. The convenience of automatic background backups you can set and forget is invaluable.

Just be sure to configure it to back up all your essential WordPress files and the full database on a regular schedule.

Store your backups both locally and remotely across multiple cloud storage providers. And be sure to test restoring your site once in a while to verify reliability.

Follow these tips, and you‘ll have total peace of mind knowing your WordPress site is backed up and recoverable. Don‘t gamble with your site‘s security — implement a smart WordPress backup strategy today!