I. Backup and restore manually via control panel.

This is not a recommendation way, but I think you should know this in some of special case.

In Cpanel, you can download all files and folders before changing it. You’re also can use phpmyadmin (default functionality) to manage database.

Backup files and folders

To do it, you connect to FTP hosting via Filezilla and download all files, folder from your wordpress installed directory to your computer.

Or you can make it faster via File manager in Cpanel.

Select all files and folders, compress it to zip file and download it to you computer.

Restore files and folders

To restore the backup file, simply delete all your current files, upload the backup file to your host and extract it.

Backup database.

You can backup your database by using the export function in phpmyadmin.

Go to phpmyadmin in your control panel, select the database from the left-hand sidebar, then chose the export.

Follow the instructor and hit Go. A file .sql will download to your computer, this is the database backup file.

Restore files and folders

Once again, we need the phpmyadmin to restore the database. Please note that you must create a new empty database before doing this restoration.

Choosing import from menu bar, upload your backup file and hit Go. You should wait a few minutes depend on the size of your backup before the restoration is completed.

II. Backup and restore manually via plugin.

I recommend you using the plugin backup method to backup your wordpress website due to some error will happen during the exporting of phpmyadmin.

There are may backup plugins , but I trust only one and free plugin BackWPUp .

The backup plugin BackWPup can be used to save your complete installation including /wp-content/ and push them to an external Backup Service, like Dropbox , S3 , FTP and many more.

After install and activate the BackWpup, we choose Add new job from the BackWpup menu to schedule the backup.

You can let the setting as default. But in the Job destination part, you should choose where to store the backup. I prefer storing it in my dropbox folder, so I check in “ Backup to Dropbox “.

In the next tab, Schedule , I set the time to run the backup. I make it run weekly, on 3:00 Sunday morning.

Finally, I go to “ To:Dropbox ” tabs to configure the dropbox account. In here, I can choose which folder will store the backup file.

After that, it makes the first time backup, you should wait until it done and check your dropbox account.

Restore.

This plugins supports only the backup process. If you want to restore, you must do it manually by extract the zip file and import the database .

Conclusion.

In this article, I covered the basic ways for you to backup and restore a wordpress website. If you enjoy this article or have a trouble, please let me know in the comment.