Website Backup: If It’s Not Tested, It’s Just a Rumor

Ask a small business owner when their website was last backed up and you get the same look you get when you ask when they last changed the smoke detector batteries. A pause. A glance at the ceiling. “I think my host does that?”

Maybe. Maybe not. I see this all the time: a site with no backup anywhere, running on the quiet hope that nothing will ever go wrong. Hope is not a backup strategy. (It’s barely a strategy.) And finding out the hard way is a real pain in the ass.

The short version

• A backup you’ve never restored is a rumor, not a backup.
• Keep copies in two places, and make sure one of them isn’t your web host.
• Back up the database and the files. Half a backup is a very expensive surprise.

Does my web host already back up my website?

Sometimes, but you can’t count on it. Plenty of hosts keep a nightly copy for their own disaster recovery and will not hand it to you, or will charge to dig it out, or only keep it for a few days.

Read the fine print on your plan. “Backups included” can mean a daily snapshot you can restore with one click, or it can mean “we might have something, open a ticket.” Those are very different products with the same bullet point.

The test is simple: can you, today, find a copy of your site from last week and tell me where it lives? If the answer involves the phrase “I’d have to ask,” you don’t have a backup yet.

What actually needs to be backed up on a WordPress site?

Two things: the database and the files. The database holds your pages, posts, settings and form entries. The files hold your theme, plugins and every photo you ever uploaded.

Miss one and the other is close to useless. A database with no images gives you a site full of broken boxes. Files with no database give you a handsome empty shell, like a restaurant with a sign and no kitchen.

If you run a store or take bookings, the database changes all day long. That means daily backups at a minimum, and a good reason to read up on what ongoing site care covers.

How often should I back up my website?

Match it to how often the site changes. A brochure site you touch twice a year is fine with a weekly copy. A site with orders, bookings or a blog needs a daily one. If losing a day of changes would make you swear out loud, back up more often.

And keep more than one copy. Backups get corrupted, and you often don’t notice the damage for a week. If you only keep yesterday’s, yesterday’s is as broken as today’s.

Where should website backups be stored?

Somewhere other than the server your site lives on. A backup that sits next to the website dies with the website. Hack, host outage, accidental deletion: same bad day for both.

Send a copy off to separate storage, like a cloud drive or a storage bucket that you control. Then you can get at it even if you lose access to your host. That’s the one that matters on the worst day.

It’s also the thing people skip, because it’s boring. Boring is what you want from a backup. I’d rather have it dull than dramatic, and I’d rather not run a half-assed one at all.

Have you ever tested restoring a backup?

Almost nobody has, and that’s the whole problem. A backup file that won’t restore is just a large file taking up room, like the box of cables in your garage. Damn thing looks useful, does nothing.

Once or twice a year, restore a copy to a test spot and make sure the site actually loads. It takes less time than the average phone call with a hosting support line, and it turns “I think so” into “yes.”

Updates are the other moment that counts. Take a fresh backup right before any big plugin or theme update, so a bad one is a five minute undo instead of a lost weekend. My post on WordPress security updates covers why those updates keep coming.

Questions people ask

Is a plugin enough to back up my website?

It can be, if it saves both the database and the files and sends them somewhere off your server. A plugin that stores copies in the same place as your site only covers you from the small stuff, like a bad update.

How long should I keep old backups?

I like at least a few weeks of daily copies. Problems like malware or a broken plugin often go unnoticed for days, and you want something clean to go back to.

Will a backup fix a hacked website?

It helps you get back to a clean version, but you still have to find out how they got in, or it happens again. Restore, then patch the hole, then change the passwords.

What should I do about my website backups this week?

Start with three small moves. Confirm what your host actually keeps and for how long. Add a second copy somewhere that isn’t your host. Then run one real restore test, even if it’s on a throwaway copy. None of it is hard, and all of it is the kind of thing people put off until the site is down and everybody’s calling.

Open your hosting account, find where your backups live, and write down the date of the last one. If you can’t find it, that’s your answer. If you’d rather have somebody else worry about it, take a look at how I work, then tell me about your site and I’ll check what you’ve got.