How to manually backup WordPress using cPanel

Last week we discussed some WordPress security tips. A backup system should form part of any WordPress security strategy you have in place, so that if anything unfortunate happens, you can restore a previous version quickly.

Whilst you should have an automated WordPress backup solution in place, having multiple backup systems is something we strongly recommend. This way if one of your backup solutions fails, you have a secondary backup system to call upon.

The guide below details how to manually backup WordPress using cPanel

Login to your cPanel account

Navigate to your login page for cPanel. This is normally your domain name or IP address followed by /cpanel

e.g. http://yourdomainname.com/cpanel

login_cpanel

Under the files section, click on the backup Wizard Icon

Click on the “Backup” button

cpanel_backup_wizard_backup

Under the “Select Partial Backup” header, click on the “Home Directory” link

cpanel_backup_partial

Click on the “Home Directory” button to download a compressed copy of your home directory.

Depending upon the size of your site, this may take a little while

cpanel_partial_home

Now that you have a copy of your home directory on your local machine, the next step is to download a copy of your WordPress database

First, click on the “Go Back” link to get to the previous page

Under the “Select Partial Backup” header, click on the “MySQL Databases” link

cpanel_backup_partial

Finally, click on the link for your WordPress database, to download a copy to your local machine.

cpanel_partial_mysql

Now that you have a local copy of your WordPress files, we recommend that you archive them in a suitable location.

You may even want to upload them to an offsite data storage provider such as Dropbox

Summary

If you’ve followed all the steps in the guide, you will now have a copy of your WordPress files and database.

Next week we’ll discuss how you can restore these files using cPanel

cPanel is available on all our packages. If you’d like to find out more, please get in touch.

Did you know…

At Clook, one of our specialisms is providing WordPress hosting, if you’d like to find out more, please get in touch with us.

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