Make Backup a Habit - Backup Tips for Bloggers
Make Backup a Habit - Backup Tips for Bloggers

Backup tips for Bloggers – Make Backup a habit this World Backup Day

Frankly I never knew that there’s a World Backup Day until few days back. I stumbled upon it while I was looking for an idea to write my next blog post. There’s already so many days across the year that I feel the number of these types of ‘special days’ would be more than the actual number of days in a calendar year ! With so many special days around already, why did I choose to write on the World Backup Day ? Being a blogger, I think backup is a habit and not a task. And I’m going to talk about it today. This World Backup Day make Backup a habit.

Taking a backup of anything, from your personal computer’s hard disk to your website’s content is always considered to be a tertiary task. So much that no one bothers to take a backup until they’ve lost any important data. How many of you’ve been in situation ? I’m sure many because I’ve been in one and trust me it can be terribly bad ! I’ve been in such spots not only on the personal front but also on my blogging / internet front. Way back in 8th grade when I was operating atulmaharaj.com, I faced the backup-restore issue multiple times. Thanks to the super nonsense host Manashostingย who kept screwing up things every now and then. Since those incidents, taking a backup has become a habit. I don’t treat backup as a task but a habit.

Automatic Backups are great

Most of the hard disk manufacturers are providing customized softwares that automatically take a backup of your folders to the external hard disk. I suggest you to configure that the first time you use the hard disk. Not only that with cloud storage like Dropbox, Box, Drive etc catching up, cloud backups are increasing manifold. From your photos to whatsapp messages, everything is being backedup to the cloud. I’m sure the day isn’t far when people would actually pay for cloud storage. I know many people who already do it, but the majority doesn’t.

Make Backup a Habit - Backup Tips for Bloggers
Make Backup a Habit – Backup Tips for Bloggers

Backup Tips for Bloggers

Backup is one of the most important thing for any website administrator or blogger. They say content is King and being a blogger, it’s our duty to protect our king ! Waking up to a malfunctioned website without any latest backup is a blogger’s worst nightmare. In fact I’ve had many people coming up to me and saying about their lost data and how the hosting partner is charging exorbitant money to provide a backup that isn’t even latest ! For website admins and bloggers automatic backups work in a slightly different way. We either pay our hosting partner for taking automated backups every x days OR we do it manually. Here are some Backup Tips for Bloggers:

  • There are different types of backups – full site and only database. Since most bloggers I know are on self hosted WordPress, taking a database backup is important. However this is a part of the full site backup.
  • Full site backups are usually large and can run into GBs based on the content you have. Database backups are relatively very small compared to full site backups.
  • However, with database backups, you will store only the data and not any images. Thus I’d prefer a full site backup.
  • Take a backup regularly. Weekly backups are the best since they have the latest copy of your data. If you are more worried about the content, go for a backup after every post you publish.
  • Remember to not store the backup file on the server (Backup-101 lesson) it should always be stored on a separate system. Either download the backup and store on your external hard disk or put it on the cloud.
  • If you cannot take a backup on your own, pay the hosting provider to take regular backups on your behalf. OR better, learn how to take automated backups. My hosting provider Siteground is providing free automated backups on their starter plan, which is great.
  • For people using WordPress there are plugins available that take regular backups and push the copy to your favorite cloud provider. This is the easiest way to back up. Here are a few WordPress Backup Plugins you could use. PS: I don’t use any.
    • UpdraftPlus –ย a wonderful freemium plugin to upload regular backups to cloud.
    • BackupBuddy –ย Backup, Restore or move WordPress.
    • VaultPress by Jetpack –ย Every WordPress user would be using Jetpack and VaultPress is from them to help you take regular backups.
  • For geeks, there are shell scripts available that will take a backup based on what details you provide. BTW these scripts run only on cPanel. Isn’t that the most popular control panel ? cPanel has an amazingly easy site backup and restore tool in place. One click backup files are created and placed in the folder which can be used to restore the website in no time using any FTP client. Here is a way to do it.
  • Lastly, make backup a habit so that you don’t cry over lost data in future.

Make Backup a habit this World Backup Day

I saw an ad by Western Digital which said “Life is busy, backup is easy” and that’s true. Technology has advanced so much that taking backups is very easy. And with that, it becomes our responsibility to take backups. Problems can creep in any time but you need to be secure yourself with backups. I’ve shared my backup tips for blogger and I hope you find it helpful. If you feel that I’ve missed out on anything, do mention in the comments below or tweet to me at @Atulmaharaj

About Atulmaharaj

A seasoned blogger and a content marketer for close to a decade now. I write about Food, Technology, Lifestyle, Travel, and Finance related posts. Blogging brings me joy and the best part is I get to read and e-meet so many amazing bloggers! PS: I'm also the founder for Socialmaharaj.com :) Favorite Quote: "Traveling is like reading a book, one who hasn't traveled, hasn't turned a page.

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13 comments

  1. Loved the post. Useful post.

  2. Atul, very timely post… for me at least. My WordPress site had been working just fine till now. But recently, it started acting up….perhaps after the update. UpDraft plus plugin is showing error every time I take a back-up. I’m looking for a resource (easy to understand) on ‘how to take a backup of WordPress site manually’. Could you direct me to it or share the link if you have already written a post on this topic. Your help would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance!

    • Thanks Bushraji. I’m assuming you are on a self hosted WordPress blog (correct me if I’m wrong). Doesn’t your provider provide free backup and restore service ?

  3. Very informative post ๐Ÿ‘ Atul. Thanks for sharing these tips ๐Ÿ‘ ๐Ÿ‘ ๐Ÿ‘

  4. Such an interesting post and I surely need to do better in this area!

  5. Such a sound idea and I am so casual at it! Need to improve.

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