Hi, this is Digital Abhi, your digital marketing friend, and a contented digital marketer. In this post, I will share how to backup a WordPress Site for FREE.

Backup a WordPress Site

I have attached a video here to help you understand better regarding the topic. So, I will highly recommend you watch this video as it will be easier to understand this with the help of a video.

After watching the video, you can refer to these footnotes to have even a better understanding of how to backup a WordPress site:

Before moving on I want to ask you one thing. Does the question arise in your mind that why we need to backup our website? Let me answer that. There are sometimes when you update a plugin or theme and because of that your site crashes and you lose all your data.

Or sometimes while shifting from one hosting to other, there are chances that you lose your data. And that’s why to avoid these kind of risks, is is advised to take regular backups.

In this post, along with showing you how to take the backup, I will also share how you can download that backup into your PC. Along with that, I will also share how you can upload your backup automatically into Google Drive.

Installing and Configuring UpdraftPlus Plugin

To perform the backup we need to install a plugin called ‘UpdraftPlus‘. To do this, go to Plugins and click on Add New. Now search for ‘Updraft’. You will see that this plugin already has more than 2M active installations. So, click on Install Now and then Activate.

One thing you should know is that this plugin is completely free to use. After getting installed, the Updraft plugin will be opened in front of us. Now go to the Settings tab. There you will see the Files Backup Schedule. I will select Weekly here. And Database backup schedule. Here also I will select Weekly.

So, now Updraft will take a weekly backup of our WordPress website. It means after each week it will take the backup of your WordPress website and will store it at your desired location. And it also asks you how many backups you want to retain. So, here we will just leave it to 2.

Now scroll a little bit and Updraft will ask you the location where you want to store or upload the backup of your WordPress site. Here, in our case, as I told you in the first paragraph, I will select Google Drive.

Scroll a little bit and here the plugin will ask you which files you want to include in the backup. So, if you want to take the backup of the whole WordPress website, then leave it as it is. Or let’s say if you want to take the backup of just plugins, you can untick all the other options. Here, we want to create the backup of our whole website. So, I will leave it as it is.

Now, scroll a little bit and click on Save Changes. Since we have selected Google Drive as our remote storage location, so, UpdraftPlus asks us to authenticate it. So, you need to click this link to authorize Updraft to create a backup in your Google Drive. Select the email id which is linked to your Google Drive. Then click on Allow. And then click on the button Complete Setup.

Taking Backup of your WordPress website

Now here click on the button ‘Backup Now’ to start the backup for your WordPress site. Then again click on Backup Now. You will see that the plugin has started uploading the backup to Google Drive. The backup will be completed in a few minutes. Once the backup is complete, click on Refresh.

Downloading the Backup to your PC

Scroll a little bit and you will see the backup files. Now let’s say you want to download the backup of Plugins and Themes to your computer. So, to do this, just click on the button of Plugins and Themes. Then you will see that it is showing the option to download the backup to your computer.

So, just click on the button ‘Download to your computer’. Select your desired location and then Save the backup. And to download the backup of themes, again click on Download to your computer. Select your desired location and then click on Save.

And what if you want to download the backup of your whole WordPress site? You have to download all of the options available here which are Database, Plugins, Themes, Uploads, and Others. As soon as you will click any of the options in the backup files, the Updraft plugin starts looking for the backup files.

And after that, we can just click on the button Download to your computer to download the backup files to our computer. And if you want to delete the backup files just click on the button Delete.

We know that WordPress is not something that can be learned in a day or something. It has a lot of mysteries in it. And to uncover those mysteries, you are free to check out my free step by step guide to WordPress.

So, this is how you can backup a WordPress site. Thanks a lot for taking out time to read this post. I hope you got some value from this post. And if you did do let me know in the comments. Also, if you have any doubts, questions, or queries, you can tell me in the comments section below. I’ll try my best to solve it.

Apart from that, we can also connect on social media. You can ask me questions on social media also. And honestly, I will be happy to help you. And stay tuned to Digital Abhi as I am consistently putting valuable content for you. Also, you can SUBSCRIBE to my YouTube channel where I am teaching WordPress and Digital Marketing for FREE.

Let’s connect Socially: