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WordPress Plugins

How to Backup Your WordPress Website Now for Free with UpdraftPlus

Everyone knows they should be backing up their WordPress website. If you’re not sure if you should be backing up your website, then ask yourself how you’d feel if your site and all its content disappeared overnight and vanished without a trace.

If that isn’t something you’d be OK with, then now is the time to start backing up your WordPress website. Not only do you need to start backing up your WordPress website, but you also need to be confident that you can restore those backups should something go wrong.

In this article, we’ll be looking at a free and feature-rich WordPress backup plugin that not only makes it easy to take full and partial website backups on an automated basis but also has a restore process you can rely on. That plugin is UpdraftPlus, a free and popular tool with an impressive 4.8 stars out of 5 rating while also managing to rack up over 1,000,000 active installations.

Why Use UpdraftPlus to Backup Your WordPress Website?

UpdraftPlus Review

There are countless backup plugins for WordPress. But after trying out many of the best options on my portfolio of WordPress websites, I settled on UpdraftPlus. While most of the leading free WordPress plugins make it easy to take a backup, when it comes to restoring those backups, things don’t always run as smoothly.

Over the years, UpdraftPlus has become the free WordPress plugin I trust to take care of safeguarding my website. Whether I’ve updated a rogue plugin that’s caused the infamous WordPress white screen of death or I’ve accidently deleted an article, UpdraftPlus has come to the rescue many times.

UpdraftPlus supports most of the leading cloud storages services, giving you a safe place to store your backup files. Personally, I have my UpdraftPlus backup files automatically sent to Dropbox for safe keeping. However, you might prefer to use Google Drive or have them emailed to you directly.

If you want to know how to backup your WordPress website now for free, then UpdraftPlus comes highly recommended. There are also premium upgrades available that can make this plugin even more useful. However, for now, most users will be fine with the core free version of UpdraftPlus. So to help you start backing up your WordPress website today, let’s do a quick walkthrough of setting up the UpdraftPlus plugin.

How to Start Taking Automated WordPress Backups Today

As UpdraftPlus is available for free from the WordPress Directory, it can be added to your site in just a few clicks. Simply log into your WordPress Dashboard. Then click on the Add New item under the Plugins menu.

UpdraftPlus Add Plugin

On the next screen, enter ‘UpdraftPlus’ in the search field and press the Enter key. Once the results are displayed, click on the Install Now button next to UpdraftPlus, then the Activate button.

Install Plugin

In just a few clicks, you’ve added powerful backup functionality to your WordPress website, for free. Now it’s time to configure the plugin.

How to Setup UpdraftPlus on Your WordPress Website

Thankfully UpdraftPlus doesn’t clutter up your WordPress sidebar menu with another top level item. Instead, the link to the UpdraftPlus control panel can be found under the Settings menu.

UpdraftPlus Settings Menu

From this page, you can quickly enable cloud storage integration and have your backups sent to a service like Dropbox or Google Drive. You can also define an automated backup schedule in just a few clicks.

UpdraftPlus Panel

Once the Updraft Plus dashboard has loaded, click on the Settings tab to configure the plugin.

UpdraftPlus Settings

From the Setting page, you can define a backup schedule and then choose the storage location for your backup files. If you’re making a lot of changes to your site, on a regular basis, then I would recommend taking both files and database backups every four hours and retaining maybe 10 versions of each. If your Dropbox account doesn’t have enough storage space for this amount of files, then Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive might be better options for you.

UpdraftPlus Schedule

If you’re not making changes to your site that often, then you can safely set the backups to be taken less frequently, with fewer files to be retained. Once you’ve made a decision, you can move onto choosing a storage location for your WordPress website backup files.

UpdraftPlus Locations

Clicking on the service or destination of your choice gives you the ability to enable the integration. In most cases, you’ll need to click on an icon, such as Dropbox, save the settings, then follow the onscreen instructions to complete the process.

UpdraftPlus Authenticate

If everything went according to plan, you’ll be taken back to the UpdraftPlus dashboard and the plugin will start taking the first backup.

UpdraftPlus Progress

Once the backup has been created, you can view the files in your Dropbox account — or wherever else you choose to store them — either locally on your computer, or online in the cloud, just to be sure they are there.

UpdraftPlus Dropbox

You can also visit the Existing Backups tab in the UpdraftPlus control panel inside your WordPress admin area to view the successfully created backup files.

UpdraftPlus Existing Backups

Now you can view the backup files and restore them when necessary. If you have opted to store your backup in the cloud, there’s no need to download them first with UpdraftPlus. This free yet powerful WordPress backup plugin can grab them from your storage location and import them into your site automatically.

UpdraftPlus Success

Hopefully, all went well with your test restoration and you now have a robust backup strategy in place for your WordPress website. All without investing a penny. If you do run into any problems, then be sure to check out the FAQ and the UpdraftPlus support forums at WordPress.org.

Final Thoughts

On the subject of WordPress backup plugins, the proof is in the pudding and when it comes to taking and – most importantly restoring – website backups, UpdraftPlus passes with flying colors.

If you’re looking for a tried and tested free backup solution for WordPress then UpdraftPlus is my recommendation. However, if you’re looking for an even more hands-off and foolproof solution, and you don’t mind paying a few dollars per month, then choosing VaultPress is the better option. But for everyone else, UpdraftPlus is the best way to start backing up your WordPress website for free today.

Are you ready to start backing up your WordPress website? Let us know in the comments below.

Categories
Weekly Watch

WordPress Weekly Watch – April 19 2015

Here are some of the best posts about WordPress from last week, including those written by me for other blogs, and those written by others from elsewhere.

April 20th to 26th 2015

To help everyone get ready for mobilegeddon, I wrote a post on the WP Eka blog highlighting some tools for getting your website mobile-ready.

On the same topic, I also dug a bit deeper into a mobile responsive testing plugin on the Pagely blog.

If you want to create a landing page or coming soon page for your WordPress website, check out the free tools I looked at in my post on the Hosting Kingdom blog.

For those new to WordPress and want to get a better understanding of how the menus work, my post on the Theme-Fusion blog will walk you through the process of setting up WordPress menus.

Tweet Wheel is a really cool and free plugin which makes it easy to auto-promote your content on Twitter. Find out more on the Pagely blog.

Elsewhere in the world of WordPress, Chris Lema shared another 40 blogging topics, this time for WordPress agencies.

On the Mad Lemmings blog, you can read about their top 10 tools for creating a blogging empire.

iThemes have launched a new Builder theme for WordPress called Anderson.  I’ve not used the iThemes Builder tool yet, but this template looks really nice.

On this very blog, new writer Ahmed shares some of the top learning resources for WordPress users.

Kevin Muldoon shares an epic post on getting the audio levels on your YouTube videos right. There’s more to this subject than you might have thought!

If you need to migrate from HHTP to HTTPS Brian Jackson can show you how on his new Learn SEO blog.

If you are interested in becoming a digital nomad, earning passive money on the road, Rob Cubbon has shared his first quarter business report from Cambodia, explaining how he makes money on the road from his laptop.

This digital nomad family share the income report for the ninth month of their amazon affiliate niche site.

If you are looking for a new project to get your teeth sunk into, then the Amazing Seller Podcast is well worth checking out.

Categories
Weekly Watch

WordPress Weekly Watch – April 19 2015

In the latest instalment of the WordPress Weekly Watch series, I take a look at some of the posts I’ve published elsewhere, as well as some of the posts I didn’t write, but wish I did, or simply enjoyed reading from the last week.

April 13th to April 19th 2015

With three years of service now under their collective belts, I take a look at the Easy Digital Downloads plugin on the Pagely blog to see how it can help you sell digital products from your WordPress website.

Also on the Pagely blog, I take a look at Give, a free plugin which allows you to accept donations on your WordPress website, and keep all of the proceeds. This WordPress donations plugin features a great design to suit the most creative of websites.

Over on the Colorlib blog, I review the WPJobBoard plugin. This tool includes everything you need to set up your own job board, or list vacancies on an existing WordPress website. WPJobBoard even includes a suitable theme to help you get up and running as quickly as possible.

WPMU DEV recently released a new front end page builder tool for WordPress. You can check out my Upfront review over on the PremiumWP blog. Its early days for Upfront, but could it be the future of WordPress?

From elsewhere in the world of WordPress, the distributed team of Automatticians share their work spaces. While, the CodeinWP team share their latest revenue report.

And on a slightly less related note: employ the holy trinity of productivity tips to get more done.

How much money can you make with WordPress-powered affiliate-monetized websites? Cubicle Houdini shares his income report.

Brian Jackson shares his 15 minute Twitter strategy for 150% growth.

Ariel Rule shares her advice for anyone struggling with coming up with blog post titles.

Chris Lema also shares 40 blog post topics for entrepreneurs struggling to create content for their blog, as well as 40 topics for WordPress freelancers – cheers Chris!

If that all sounds like too much effort though, you can hire me to write your blog posts – check out my freelance blogger website now.