WordPress is the leading Content Management System (CMS) for many different websites and millions of blogs around the world. While WordPress makes it very easy to make a backup of your valuable content, few people actually do it the right way. Just because a WordPress backup is simple does not mean that you should only rely on the default settings. Here are five mistakes that people need to avoid when making a backup.

They only back up their posts

Remember that your site is more than just your posts. Even though it would be a catastrophic loss for many sites to lose all posts, remember that you also have your WordPress plugins, theme modifications, and pages. These are all important for the functionality of your website. Even if you could replicate the exact same look, it is going to take a lot of time.

Not backing up often enough

Consider this scenario – you run a weekly backup, but you have daily posts. This means that if the outage happens on the wrong day, you may lose many blog posts. This means that social media shares, comments, and inbound links are going to go to your 404 page. Oftentimes this is a temporary setback, but just imagine what kind of first impression you make with first-time visitors when it comes to the reliability and quality of your website?

Only relying on manual backups

There are countless online storage options available, ranging from DropBox to Amazon’s Cloud Drive. However, if you are constantly managing your own backup it is going to take time and will be difficult to maintain. Even if you find a fast way to create a manual backup, it is still another thing that you have to add to your to-do-list for that day.

Exclusively backing up on your computer

Remember that if someone hacks your website, the hacker may have gotten into your other files too. There is no guarantee that a virus would not corrupt your files, you may be saving already corrupted files in an effort to back up your site. Using online cloud storage is going to help you avoid those problems, even if your hard drive dies, your files are still safe.

Never testing the backup

So you made a backup, everything is great. You have a safety net in place in case everything goes wrong, but what happens if the safety net has a few holes in it? The only way to determine whether your backup works is by testing it regularly. This helps you determine whether the backup is sufficient or whether you need to make a new backup immediately.

Remember that your website is more than just your posts. If you are unsure about the viability, scope, and security of website backups, you may want to look into automated options that do it for you. Play around with a few of the different options until you find the one that is right for you.