Backups have saved my life, not in a literal way, but in a relief way.

I’ve been in a handful of situations in my career where I need to restore to a backup

Fortunately for the most part, I know what I’m doing, so it’s rarely needed, but in the cases it is needed, I thank the lord I did it.

Like holy shit. You know that feeling when your heart drops and it’s like, “did I just screw everything up?”

I get that feeling working in tech a lot.

And I know other people do too.

Having some sort of backup system in your WordPress site will be a godsend to your future

I promise you, you will not regret it.

Most website hosts have backups, but it is important to ask your website host what their backup setup is.

Is it once every 24 hours?

Once every 4 hours?

Can you change the setting?

How long are backups stored for?

If you find it’s the case your host doesn’t offer backups, there are free plugins out there that you can install that backup your site for you and they store that backup in a folder usually in your file manager.

I like to try and have these backups take up less than 1GB of space just to not clog up my server space with that garbage, but you can always download them to your local hard drive on your Mac or windows, etc.

And you can upload them to Google Drive, Dropbox, bunny.net cold storage, etc.

Having as much backup security as possible for your website and virtual files is nice.

If you can afford it and have the time, the best thing to do would be all of the above.

• Backup for 30 days in your WordPress website host
• Backup via a plugin or something in your files
• Backup downloaded to a hard drive
• Backup uploaded to a cloud storage somewhere

For most people, that’s way overkill, but for those who rely on their online business for money or just want to protect their virtual assets at all costs, then that time and investment will be worth it at some point.

And even if it’s not, I recommend riding a motorcycle with a helmet and having some sort of parachute in a plane.

You may never need it, may never use it, but when you need it, you’re glad you have it.

You might not think you need backups now, but when you need them and don’t have them, it will feel like getting kicked in the back of the head by a donkey.

Your heart will drop, so back up your shit.