It’s recommended that use a best WordPress backup plugin to save backup of your WordPress site. You can find a plenty of renowned WordPress backup plugins that can save regular backup of your sites. Apart from that you should also backup WordPress site manually because in case your backup plugin fails to restore your website then you can do the job on your own. Let’s assume that your websites have been hacked (I know it’s scary but just assume) and you don’t have access to your websites and unfortunately, your backup plugin fails to restore your sites. Then what would you do? You wouldn’t have any choice left other than starting everything from the very beginning. But if you have a manual WordPress backup file then you can readily restore everything by accessing your website hosting cPanel. So, in this tutorial, I will tell you how to backup WordPress site manually.

Saving manual backup of your WordPress websites today can save you against future problems.

As mentioned earlier, you should use a best WordPress backup plugin along with saving the manual WordPress backup to your computer. This way you can make sure that your sites’ data is protected. I forgot to mention that WordPress sites are vulnerable to cyber attacks, millions of cyber attacks happening each day, therefore you should take all possible measures like having a robust framework to safeguard your WordPress websites and also should backup your WordPress website in all possible ways.

Today, we’re going to save manual backup of MySQL database, files and folders of WordPress website to our computer. So let’s get started, read on to know how to backup WordPress site manually.

3 Simple Ways to Backup WordPress Site Manually –

Note: I’m using Blushost screenshots in this tutorials. But don’t worry! If your hosting provider is different then still you can find the same options on your hosting cpanel.

First of all, get access to your WordPress hosting account like Bluehost, HostGator or the like, and scroll down and click on File Manager under Files tab. Note: Make sure Files tab is selected.

Now, click on the radio button next to ‘Document Root for’ and select a domain name for backup. Subsequently, click on submit button.

Upon clicking on the button, you’ll be redirected to a new page. Wait for auto login or click on the login button. Once you get logged IN, you will be able to see your website files.

Once you logged IN, you will be able to see your files and folders, simply click on the first folder and scroll down to the end of the list and press and hold Shift Key then click on the last folder or file. This way all files and folders will be selected. Now, from the top navigation menu, hit Compress button.

After clicking on the link, a pop-up box will appear on your computer screen, just select Zip Archive as compress type and give a name to your backup file then press Compress File(s) button.

Wait! Once the backup is created hit close button and you can see a new ZIP folder in the list; if you’re unable to see your ZIP folder file then refresh the page.

In the next step, select the ZIP folder and click on Download and save ZIP file to your computer.

That’s it. We’ve successfully completed the first step (backup WordPress site manually). Now, it’s time to backup WordPress MySQL database.

How to backup WordPress MySQL Database –

MySQL is an open source software to store databases and WordPress uses it. Having a backup of database of your website, helps you restore your data files easily when you don’t have access your admin area. If you have backup of your WordPress database then you can easily restore it by visiting your web-hosting cpanel.

To backup WordPress site database, go back to your web hosting homepage and scroll down and click on phpMyAdmin under database tools.

Click on first root file to expand all databases then select your site database from the list and click on export button.

Select the radio button next to Quick or click Custom if you know more about this thing. If you select Quick then all tables will be downloaded to your computer therefore simply select Quick if you don’t know what you’re doing. After that select SQL as format and hit Go button.

Now, you’ve backup of both database and files of your WordPress website. You can use these backup files to restore your site files; if it gets hacked or something like that happens.

Many renowned web hosting providers allow users to backup WordPress site manually from their web hosting cpanels like Bluehost, HostGator.  If above procedure is hard to follow for you then you can follow the steps given below to backup WordPress site manually.

Get access to your web hosting cpanel and scroll down and look for Site Backup option (if available). Once you find the option simply click on it.

Once the page opens, click on download links to download backup of Website files, Home directory, and MySQL database of your website.

You can also download backup of WordPress through your WordPress dashboard. This is the easiest method to backup WordPress site manually. Simply follow the steps given below to backup WordPress site to computer.

Login to your WordPress dashboard and from the sidebar, click on Export (you’ll find this option under Tools). Now select radio button next to “All content” and then hit Download Export File.

That’s it. A backup file will be downloaded to your computer.

You should backup WordPress site manually and also use a WordPress backup plugin; free or paid it’s up to you but must use.

I tried to explain briefly how to backup WordPress site manually and I hope this will help you. If you’ve any query then feel free to ask!