What Is a Backup in WordPress

Backups are copies of your WordPress site’s files and database. They are used to restore your site in case something goes wrong, such as a hacker attack or a server crash. There are many ways to create backups, but the most common is to use a WordPress plugin.

If you have a backup, if something goes wrong with your sites, such as hacking or accidental deletion, then you can restore it from the backup and continue working on it.

Backing up is a good idea for any website, but it is especially important for WordPress sites. This is because WordPress uses a database to store all of its information and data. If something bad happens to your site and you don’t have a backup, then all of that data could be lost forever.

Types of Backups in WordPress

WordPress provides a variety of backup options:

  • Full Backup – This type of backup will back up your entire site, including the WordPress files and database.
  • Database Backup – This type of backup will only create a copy of your database file. It does not include any of your WordPress files or files outside of wp-content/uploads/. The advantage of this is that it’s much smaller than full backups, which can be very large depending on how many images and videos are stored on your site.
  • File System Backup – A file system backup is similar to a database backup in that it doesn’t include any information from the wp-content folder (which includes themes, plugins, and core files). However, instead of backing up just one single SQL file like with the ‘wp db export command,’ we’re going to make sure everything in our root directory gets backed up too! This way, if something goes wrong with our theme or plugin directory, we won’t lose all those cool customizations we’ve made!