Do you want to take a backup WordPress site without any plugins?
Step-by-step instructions to take a backup WordPress website without any plugs. You can use this backup and restore it whenever needed.
Advantages Of Manual WordPress Backup
- You can take backup of any size of the website without any restrictions.
- Free of cost.
- Easily customize from your online server or local server.
- 100% data protection.
- Backup is more secure. Backup with the plugin may break or stop working in future plugin versions.
- Full control over backup storage
Disadvantages Of Manual WordPress Backup
- Time-consuming process.
- Advanced knowledge is required.
- Limited automation. Not possible to take automatic backups in scheduled intervals.
Steps to Take WordPress Backup
- Export MySQL backup from phpmyadmin or adminer.
- Compress (zip) the WordPress root folder like the public_html folder.
- Save the zip file and MySQL .sql file to a cloud server like Google Drive.
WordPress MySQL Backup
Go WordPress root folder like public_html or your domainname.com folder. Then find the wp-config.php file. You can identify the database name from it.
Then go to phpmyadmin or adminer dashboard and find the database. You can see phpmyadmin from your server cpanel. Or just upload adminer file to your server. Then navigate yourdomain.com/adminer.php finally, copy database credentials from wp-config.php to adminer login form.
Download adminer: https://www.adminer.org/#download
Finally, select your website database name then export as .sql file.
WordPress Backup Files
Two methods exist to take file backups.
- Take backup from the file manager by the server provider.
- Backup by SSH
Backup From The File Manager
Go to cPanel or any other server dashboard then select File Manager. Then identify the WordPress installed location. Commonly, the public_html folder or domain name folder eg: your-domain.com.
Then right-click on the folder and compress it as in the image below.
Backup By SSH
SSH is the secure protocol to connect your server from your terminal. It is helping to manage the remote servers.
Step 1. Login to SSH server. Open the terminal from your device. Then add the following command.
ssh username@hostname
Replace username
with your actual username and hostname
with the IP address or domain name of the remote server.
Step 2: Install the zip tool
sudo apt install zip
zip -v
Step 3: Zip the WordPress installed folder
zip -r archive.zip path/to/folder
Step 4: Log out from SSH. Then export the zip file to your local machine.
scp [email protected]:/dir/of/archive.zip \local\dir\archive.zip