Backups are without a doubt an important way to safeguard a website from damage.
Websites are increasingly becoming a critical part of running a business – they often serve as the first point of contact with a customer – proving details of goods and services as well as contact details. For e-commerce businesses they can be entirely ran from the website.
With this increased reliance on websites the importance of a good working and reliable backup increases.
Which leads to the question – how often should you backup a WordPress website?
There’s two parts to this –
- how much can you afford to lose (should damage happen)
- how often is the website updated – e.g. posts, comments, sales data
For an active website this would mean daily backups with a thirty day retention. As well as periodic backups before updates are installed.
Daily backups strike a balance between minimising data loss and not consuming too many resources.
Ultimately the answer depends on your website and how much data loss you can afford, compared to how much resources for backups you can afford. An active e-commerce website may need real-time instant backups or a one-page business website may not need regular backups. However – at very least I would recommend weekly backups with a monthly retention.