As a WordPress website owner, you might have wondered if there was a way to set up an automatic backup to Google Drive for free. Do not worry, WP Tracer is here to help you.
In this post, we’ll learn to automatically backup our WordPress website to Google Drive and restore it using a plugin called UpdraftPlus WordPress Backup Plugin.
Before starting the tutorial let us know what backing up is and why it is essential in WordPress.
Table of Contents
What is WordPress backup?
WordPress is a popular CMS platform for websites. You can easily create a website with WordPress. But what if your website crashes or gets hacked? In that case, you will need to restore your site from the backup file. Backing Up is a process of storing all the files of the WordPress website to an external physical or cloud storage.
There are two ways to backup your WordPress website: backing up with the help of a plugin or backing up manually.
The first way is using a plugin, which automatically backs up your site’s data to your WordPress account (FTP) at a single time or at regular intervals. The second way is backing up manually, which entails downloading all of the files from your site and storing them in an external hard drive or another location on your computer.
The WordPress backup plugin is the most convenient way to take regular backups of your site and store them in an offsite location, such as Google Drive, Amazon S3 or Dropbox. But what does this plugin do? It creates a copy of all the files and databases on your site or cloud storage so that you can easily restore it if something goes wrong.
Why is WordPress backup important?
By regularly backing up your WordPress site, you can protect yourself against data loss and security breaches and ensure that you have a reliable way to restore your site if something goes wrong. Backing up your WordPress site is important for a number of reasons:
Data Loss Prevention: A backup of your site can help protect you from data loss due to server crashes, malware attacks, or human error. If something goes wrong with your site, you can use your backup to restore it to a previous state.
Security: A backup of your site can also help you recover from a security breach. If your site is hacked, you can use your backup to restore a clean version of your site and secure it against future attacks.
Peace of Mind: Knowing that you have a backup of your site can give you peace of mind and allow you to focus on running your business or blog without worrying about potential data loss.
Compliance: Depending on the type of business you are running, you may be required to keep backups of your data for compliance purposes.
Backing up WordPress website with UpdraftPlus Plugin
In this tutorial, we will be using a plugin called “Updraft Plus WordPress Backup Plugin” to automatically backup our WordPress website to Google Drive. This automated backup can be restored in case anything goes wrong with our website.
So, let’s get started by installing the plugin first.
- From the WordPress dashboard go to Plugins >> Add New >> Search for UpdraftPlus WordPress Backup Plugin and click on install and then activate.
- Hover over to WordPress Settings >> click on UpdraftPlus Backups.
- From the UpdraftPlus plugin options, click on Settings.
- From the option “Choose your remote storage” click on Google Drive.
- Now click on Sign in With Google and sign in with your Google account where you want to store the backups. You may need to give necessary permission to UpdraftPlus during the login process.
- After giving the necessary access to your Google Drive account, you will be redirected to UpdraftPlus’s orange landing page. From there you need to click on Complete Setup.
- After clicking on Complete Setup you will be redirected to the UpdraftPlus dashboard on your website.
- Now go to UpdraftPlus settings, click on Google Drive and Click on Save Changes.
- After this, refresh your page, now in your Updraft Plus settings, you should see your Google account name as below.
After you connect your Google Account with the UpdraftPlus WordPress backup plugin you need to configure the automatic backup settings.
For that configuration, you need to again go to UpdraftPlus settings.
From the “Files backup schedule” and “database backup schedule” choose the option that best suits you. Ideally, weekly would be a good option if you do not upload content to your WordPress website daily. However, if you have a website where you upload many contents daily you should choose the option daily.
From the “retain this many scheduled backups” options leave it to 2
Understanding “retain this many scheduled backups”
Choosing 2 on this option will store 2 recent backups in your Google Drive. For example. If you have a weekly backup schedule, this plugin will backup your website at the end of the first week and store it in Google Drive. At the end of next week, UpdraftPlus will again backup your WordPress website and upload the backup into your Google Drive automatically. But at the end of the third week, UpdraftPlus will delete the first week’s backup and then upload the new backup. In this way, you will always have 2 recent backups. Let’s say if you change the ‘2’ to ‘3’ in the “retain this many scheduled backups” options then UpdraftPlus will store 3 recent backups to your Google Drive.
Remember, if you increase this number, you may run out of storage in your Google Drive.
Finally, scroll down below and click on Save Changes. You now have successfully scheduled an automatic backup of your WordPress website to Google drive for free.
In this way, you can automatically backup your WordPress website automatically to Google Drive for free.
Testing automatic backups
If you want to test if the automatic backups are working correctly or not, you can click to “Backup / Restore” option from the UpdraftPlus dashboard. There you will see the date and time for the next scheduled backups. If you do not see this message you might have set the backups schedule to ‘manual’ in settings.
After you have set up the plugin; if you do not want to wait for the scheduled backups to start, you can always do manual backups and after the process completes, it will be uploaded to your Google Drive.
Note: If you start a manual backup, you do not need to stay on your website till the backup completes. The plugin will run its thing on the server and will complete the task automatically on the cloud.
Restoring the backup
After your Website files and databases are backed up to your Google Drive, you can always restore them by going to the “Backup/ Restore” option on the UpdraftPlus plugin. Even if you reset your WordPress website to zero you can always restore your full website using the backups on your Google Drive.
In that option, you will see your backup files from where you simply need to click “Restore”.
Note: While restoring, you should restore both the website files and database for your site to work perfectly.
FAQ’s
Can I backup my website on Google Drive?
Yes, you can automatically backup your WordPress website to Google Drive using the UpdraftPlus WordPress backup plugin.
How do I sync WordPress with Google Drive?
You can easily sync automatic backups of your WordPress website usingUpdraftPlus WordPress backup plugin.
What is UpDraftPlus?
UpDraftPlus is a popular WordPress plugin that provides an easy way to create backups of your WordPress site. With UpDraftPlus, you can create backups of your site’s files and database, and store the backups in a variety of locations including on your server, on a cloud storage service like Google Drive or Dropbox, or on an FTP server.
How do I use UpDraftPlus to back up my WordPress site?
To use UpDraftPlus to back up your WordPress site, you will need to install the UpDraftPlus plugin on your site and then configure it to create backups according to your desired schedule. Here are the steps to follow:
Install the UpDraftPlus plugin on your WordPress site.
Go to Settings > UpDraftPlus Backups in your WordPress dashboard.
Click on the “Settings” tab.
Choose the types of files and database tables you want to include in your backups.
Select the backup interval (e.g., daily, weekly, monthly).
Choose where you want to store your backups (e.g., on your server, on a cloud storage service).
Click “Save Changes.”
What are the benefits of using UpDraftPlus for WordPress backups?
There are several benefits to using UpDraftPlus for WordPress backups:
It is easy to use: UpDraftPlus has a user-friendly interface that makes it easy to create and manage backups of your WordPress site.
It offers a range of storage options: You can choose to store your backups on your server, on a cloud storage service, or on an FTP server. This gives you flexibility in how you manage your backups.
It allows you to schedule backups: With UpDraftPlus, you can schedule your backups to run at a specific time and frequency, so you don’t have to remember to create backups manually.
It has a restore feature: In addition to creating backups, UpDraftPlus also allows you to restore your site from a previous backup with just a few clicks.
Overall, UpDraftPlus is a convenient and reliable way to create and manage backups of your WordPress site.
Wrapping Up
In conclusion, in this article, we discussed an easy and free way to automatically backup a WordPress website to Google Drive and restore it using the all-time popular UpdraftPlus WordPress backup plugin.
If you run into any problems during the backup process or if you have any queries regarding the post, feel free to drop a comment below and I will get back to you.