Total Upkeep Backup Plugin FAQ

The Total Upkeep plugin lets you backup your WordPress website, schedule automatic backups and more. The questions below represent common backup questions that are answered with the use of the features in the Total Upkeep plugin.

Do I have a WordPress backup?

• The primary goal of making a WordPress backup is to provide yourself peace of mind by having a copy of your site that can easily be restored in case of disaster. These disasters can include your WordPress site failing, getting hacked or simply rolling back to a previous state for a number of reasons. In fact, if you do not have a backup, you should make it a priority to establish one immediately. Your backup regimen should begin when you are initially creating your website. If you do not have a backup already, we recommend running your first WordPress backup.

How Often should I Make a WordPress backup?

If you don’t have a backup, then you should immediately create one to protect your website. Once that has been done, you can use the Total Upkeep Plugin to schedule automatic backups.

It’s also a good idea to backup your site before you update WordPress, or any plugins and themes. Sometimes an upgrade to a plugin can break your site or make things look off, so it’s always a good idea to have a backup of your site before the update.

When should I make my backups?

• The frequency at which you take backups should correlate with the frequency that your site changes. If you have an informational site that only changes rarely, then it is safe to say you can limit backups and manually take them when you login to make changes. If you have a blog with a lot of membership activity, then you may want to look into scheduling daily backups.

Do I have the storage space to make backups?

• The storage space is often the main concern when making and scheduling backups, but there are also other factors that will affect your decision. You can use your hosting server interface to see the amount of hard drive space that you have used, and how much you have left. If your backups are staying on the server, then you need to make sure that you sufficient storage space.

Where should my backups be stored?

• Typically, you will want to store backups remotely, which means in a location other than the server where your website is stored. That way, if something happens to the server, then you have a backup in a safe location elsewhere to restore from. Total Upkeep provides options to store your backup copies on the web server, on your local computer, or a remote FTP/SFTP server. If you have Total Upkeep Premium , you can store a WordPress backup on Amazon S3 or automatically upload your backup to Google Drive (Premium only).

Will my backup affect my website?

• When you make backups, they use server resources such as memory, CPU processing time, and storage space. So, it is important to remember that making backups can impact the performance of your website when it is being processed. You should plan to have your backups made when you have the least amount of traffic.

What am I backing up?

• When you make a backup it typically should consist of all of your website files including the database files. If you have custom files outside of WordPress, then you may need to specify them in the Total Upkeep settings, using the Custom option. There are also times where you may want to backup only certain files. This may be due to limited hard drive space or limited time for the backup to occur. Total Upkeep allows for you to include or exclude backup files or database elements.

Don’t see your problem listed?

• Feel free to visit our Forums now, and ask your question. If you are a BoldGrid Premium user, you can also login to BoldGrid Central to submit a Support Request and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

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