The Importance of Backups
Backups allow us to restore a previous version of a website if the website breaks or has other major issues.
Common reasons a backup is needed
- the site got hacked
- the theme, a plugin, or wordpress was updated and is incompatible with another element of the site
- code was edited or added to the site that is incomplete or problematic
- a redirect loop was created
- etc.
Any time major changes are being made to a site it is important that we make sure there are backups in place.
Some hosting platforms do automatic backups at different intervals, but because we don’t have access to all clients’ hosting, it is hard to know what they may have in place. Kinsta, WPEngine, and A2 Hosting do daily backups. GoDaddy and BlueHost can have automatic backups set up, however, most clients don’t pay for those plans and so they have no protections in place. In these cases, we use BackupBuddy to ensure there is a backup available in case the site breaks. If you are needing to double check there are backups in place and do not know how to check a client’s hosting, please ask the Fulfillment Director or the Tech Director for assistance.
BackupBuddy
BackupBuddy is an easy to use plugin to make backups of a website. You can even schedule backups so that you always have a recent backup of the website.
BackupBuddy is also used for migrating sites from a staging server to a live server using ImportBuddy.