What's your Wordpress/server backup model?

bernard

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I use UpdraftPlus and rely on hosting provider backups, which is by far the easiest to restore, but also risky if a company goes under.

What do you prefer as a backup method?
 
I used to do it manually - download all files in a zip folder from the server, and download a copy of the database. I kept one copy of the files on my PC and one on DropBox.

Now I just use ManageWP which automatically creates a backup every month, and I can restore a backup with the click of a button. There is also an upgrade that allows me to download the files if I need to reinstall manually.
 
I find that ManageWP has so many failures with updating plugins, that I didn't want to trust it with backups.

I found that when I tried to update all plugins at the same time, there was a high error rate. I update them one at a time now and haven’t had a problem since.

I haven’t actually checked the backup facility to see if it works without any issues, I probably should do that!
 
I use UpdraftPlus to backup to an AWS S3 Bucket, which automatically creates another backup to a second S3 bucket. With S3 Buckets you can use automatic versioning, which makes it really easy to set how long backup should be stored and they're automatically deleted + it's really cheap storage.

I also let DigitalOcean make a backup of the entire server every week.
 
I use UpdraftPlus, sending offsite to Dropbox, as well as the on-site snapshots that my hosting company takes daily.

One thing to not do is save your backups locally on the same sever that the site is hosted on. That's not a backup but I know a lot of people do it. I've even seen people start taking backups of their backups too, and wonder why they're starting to get to like 100 GB's, etc.
 
If you are managing multiple sites at once, I highly recommend this tool: https://infinitewp.com/.

You can literally do everything from the dashboard:
- Schedule backups or run them manually
- Manage plugin updates and shows you which ones have vulnerabilities
- Schedules reports (incase you want to send website maintenance reports to clients)
- Ability to track website uptimes, google page speed, GWT and GA within the same report.
- Plenty more

Saved me a ton of money since I have reports setup to proactively track everything. This proactive approach helped me decrease costs (in terms of paying developers) since I rarely run into any issues now.

If I do have an issue, I can restore the backup in less than 2 minutes and figure out the problem from within the tool :-) I have been using it for the past 2 years with no complaints.

Happy managing!
 
I use the free version of WPVivid that allows scheduled backups and storing them into Google Drive.

It's the same functionality as Updraft, but I stayed with this WPVivid thanks to the scheduling for free. I think the downside is that it allows max 7 retained backups in the free version.

I also occasionally backup manually via Updraft.

If the server uses DigitalOcean/Vultr I enable server backups as well.

I haven't taken a little time to decide on the best backup solution yet. The way I do it right now isn't as clean as I'd like.
 
I have a dedicated server with LiquidWeb which gives me three layers of backup + 2 of my own.

1. I have 4 SSDs in RAID 0+1 array so that's level 1
2. 1 TB Physical backup drive for level 2
3. Guardian Cloud Backups for level 3

4. Dropbox
5. On a portable SSD

So that's basically 2 onsite backups and 1 cloud backup from the hosting company and 1 on-site and 1 cloud at my own level.

I know it's an overkill but this is my bread and butter, so I don't take any chances.
 
I know it's an overkill but this is my bread and butter, so I don't take any chances.

I feel you on this. I have a rack of signal processing equipment next to me, and in it is a 4 hard drive raid unit. I've got four 7200RPM 3TB drives in it. Three of them are in Raid 1 configuration to mirror each other and act as my business hub. The fourth one mirrors the hard drive within my computer.

Then there's the on-site hosting backups, the automated Dropbox backups, and the various static files I have on a USB stick too.

As they say, if you aren't backed up in at least three physical locations, you aren't safe, no matter how much redundancy you have going on.
 
I feel you on this. I have a rack of signal processing equipment next to me, and in it is a 4 hard drive raid unit. I've got four 7200RPM 3TB drives in it. Three of them are in Raid 1 configuration to mirror each other and act as my business hub. The fourth one mirrors the hard drive within my computer.
What equipment/software does that setup specifically entail?
 
What equipment/software does that setup specifically entail?

You can see it here, it's the silver unit in the rack with the blue and purple/pink lights:

aqds5g0.jpg


It's the OWC Mercury Rack Pro, made for Macs. I use the software SoftRaid to control the RAIDs and make sure all the data is secure and accurate.

There's lots of options, including enclosures that control the RAID configuration in the hardware, etc. There's desktop versions that don't need to be rackmounted, ones with 2 drives, 3 drives, 4 (like mine) up to 20 even.
 
If you are managing multiple sites at once, I highly recommend this tool: https://infinitewp.com/.

+1

Just came to say the same thing. InfiniteWP is the bomb. I've got backups on a separate drive on the server but take a weekly snapshot of each of my WP sites with InfiniteWP and keep 5 weeks in arrears. These are sent to Dropbox, but you also have the choice of Google Drive, AWS, and FTP.

That and all the other tools it offers for keeping sites up to date, analytics, cloning, installing... well, it's a pretty indispensable tool. I got in years ago when they were offering lifetime licenses and haven't regretted it one bit.
 
One word: Kinsta.

Plus you get one click staging environments so you don't have to break your site every time you want to make a change to your wordpress stack
 
I know this is an old thread but curious, what hosting company is that?
Knownhost. Looks like on VPS’s and Dedi’s they do backups every other day and hold them for 2 weeks now. I think these are full backups. Before it was daily snapshots. I could be wrong. I’d recommend researching it before committing for this reason.
 
Anyone using WPreset? Seems like a good way to manage many sites.
 
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