Backup is a regular process to keep your website safe from any unfortunate incident. The basic idea is very similar to a computer file backup process. We take backup to make sure our files and data are safe and this is true for web hosting as well.

Almost every hosting company provides backup services to their clients, whether it’s free or paid. Most of the companies store monthly or daily backup for a certain time according to their plan and policy. In many cases, those are very limited. The better option is to take regular backup or set your custom backup plan. This will depend on your website’s function, facility, and activity.

If you update your website once a week or month, you should take weekly or monthly backup respectively. For users oriented websites where many people are involved, and they process data regularly, a daily backup is recommended. Moreover, performing a backup before any update is necessary to avoid human error during update.

However, there many cloud-based backup service providers are available to perform periodical backup. They will take care of your data from being compromised. It is effortless and you don’t need to spend time on it. They will perform backup behind the scenes, and your data will be stored on a remote server.

On the contrary, if you are interested to perform backups on your own, you need to go to cPanel of your website first. In the ‘Files’ section, you will find ‘Backup Wizard’. Three options are available in ‘Backup Wizard’- ‘Backup/Restore’ to choose what is needed, ‘Full/Partial Backup’ to select whether you need a full backup or selected data backup. The last option is ‘Download’, and it uses to save an existing backup to your hard drive.

Here is the process in one line- cPanel > Backup Wizard > Backup/Restore – Full/Partial Backup – Download

Backup feature allows to download a compressed copy of the entire website which includes-

• Home Directory
• MySQL Databases
• Email forwarding configuration
• Email filters configuration

Four more features are available to select where to preserve the backup. You can select one from Home Directory, Remote FTP, Remote FTP (passive mode) or Secure Copy (SCP) as your backup destination.

After selecting the destination, click on ‘Generate Backup’ to start the process, and it will start working in the background. Once your backup is generated, you will be notified by email if you provide one.

You may need to restore the backup at any time. For this, first, you need to go to ‘Backup Wizard’ again, and there you will find restore option. It’s a very easy process to perform. Just select the file which you have generated previously and click ‘Upload’. Your backup will be restored automatically.