See how to backup and restore your site with the free version of the UpdraftPlus plugin.
Plus an easy way to backup the files it does not automatically get that you most definitely want to have.
This post is part of a full series on the UpdraftPlus suite of plugins and backup solutions.
- UDP Backup & Restore with Free Version – this post
- UDP Premium Features
- UDP Migrator Review
- UDP Free vs Premium vs Migrator
- Amazon S3 Tutorial
- Webmaster Training
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See the notes below the video for more helpful tips.
Additional Notes
Setting backup time
I would make that in the middle of the night when traffic is slow.
Just be careful to set it at least an hour after you normally have scheduled posts set to publish, and an hour away from the time your RSS to email service picks up.
For example, I schedule my posts to publish just after midnight, so it has the next day’s timestamp on it. And then I have MailChimp set to pick up the RSS feed around 4 am.
So, I set my backup to run around 2am and it has time to run with nothing else happening on the site.
Backup Frequency
You can set a separate schedule for backing up your files and your database.
So, if you have a transactional site like a store, you may want to back up your database more frequently.
If you’re just blogging and changing the content on your site periodically, I would suggest backing both of them up at the same interval, so you have a full set of backup files each time.
The frequency options in the drop down are
- Every 4, 8, or 12 hours
- Daily
- Weekly
- Fortnightly, which is every 2 weeks
- And then monthly
Match this frequency to how often you change the content on your site. So, if you blog at least once a week, then set it to weekly. If you blog several times a week and have lots of blog comments, you may want to set it to daily.
Just know that taking a backup and sending the files to remote storage take a toll on your hosting resources. So, backup as often as you need to, but don’t overly tax the system.
Backup Storage
Some plugins offer their own vault
But, I advise keeping at least 30 days’ worth of backups, because it may be a while before you notice a compromise or issue on your site and you may need to step further back in time to get a clean set of backup files.
The free Dropbox and Google Drive accounts, and many of these others, only give you 5GB of storage. If your site is any size at all, that will only leave you room for at most 2 backups before you have to start overwriting them.
Amazon S3 is the better choice. It’s pennies a month for storage and infinitely safe.
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