NyasaCloud
Most people don’t think about website backups until the moment they desperately need one.
A plugin update breaks the site. A database gets corrupted. A hacker defaces your homepage. An accidental deletion wipes out months of content. In each of these scenarios, there are only two types of website owners: those who have a recent backup, and those who are about to have a very bad week.
This guide covers everything you need to know about website backups — what they are, how they work, how often you need them, and how to restore from one when things go wrong.
What Is a Website Backup?
A website backup is a complete copy of everything that makes your website work, saved at a specific point in time. This includes:
Your files: All the code, themes, plugins, images, and uploaded media that make up your website.
Your database: For database-driven websites (WordPress, Joomla, most e-commerce platforms), the database holds all your content — every blog post, product listing, customer record, and setting. Without it, your site is just an empty shell.
Your email (if hosted with your site): If you have email accounts associated with your domain, those mailboxes and their contents should also be backed up.
A backup is only useful if it contains all three of these components. A backup of just your files, without the database, can’t restore a WordPress site.
Why You Need Backups: Real Scenarios
Let’s make this concrete. Here are situations where backups make the difference between a two-minute fix and a complete disaster:
Scenario 1: The Failed Update
You update WordPress core, a theme, or a plugin. The new version has a conflict with another part of your site. Your site breaks — white screen, error message, or completely scrambled layout.
With a backup from before the update: restore, problem solved, take 15 minutes. Without a backup: hours or days of debugging, or starting over entirely.
Scenario 2: The Hacked Website
Your site gets compromised by attackers who inject spam links, malware, or redirect your visitors to malicious sites. Even after you clean the malware, hidden backdoors may remain.
With a clean backup from before the infection: restore the backup, change all passwords, done. Without a backup: extensive manual cleanup, uncertainty about whether all traces of the hack are gone, potential Google blacklisting.
Scenario 3: The Accidental Deletion
You or a team member accidentally deletes a page, a product category, or worse — the entire content of the database. You only notice weeks later when a customer mentions the missing product.
With backups going back several weeks: locate the right backup, restore just the deleted content. Without backups: the content is simply gone.
Scenario 4: The Hosting Problem
In rare cases, a hosting server has a hardware failure or data corruption event. Even well-run hosting companies occasionally lose data. Hosting providers that keep their own backups are not the same as you keeping your own backups.
With your own off-site backup: restore your site on any hosting provider, anywhere. Without your own backup: entirely dependent on whether your hosting provider can recover your data.
The 3-2-1 Backup Rule
The most widely respected backup strategy in IT is called the 3-2-1 rule:
3 copies of your data (your live site, plus two backups) 2 different types of storage media or locations 1 copy stored off-site (away from your primary hosting server)
In practical terms for a website owner, this means:
- Your live site (on your hosting server)
- A backup stored on the same hosting server
- A backup stored somewhere completely separate — your own computer, Google Drive, Dropbox, Amazon S3, or a dedicated backup service
The reason for off-site storage is simple: if your hosting server has a catastrophic failure and loses all data, a backup stored on that same server is also lost. Your off-site copy is your ultimate safety net.
How Often Should You Back Up?
The right backup frequency depends on how often your website changes:
Daily backups: Appropriate for most active websites — blogs that publish regularly, e-commerce stores processing orders, any site where content changes frequently. This limits your maximum data loss to 24 hours.
Weekly backups: Appropriate for websites that change rarely — informational sites that are updated occasionally, sites with mostly static content.
Before every update: Regardless of your regular schedule, always take a manual backup immediately before:
- Updating WordPress core, themes, or plugins
- Making significant changes to your site’s design or structure
- Installing new plugins or themes
- Running database operations or migrations
Real-time backups: For high-value e-commerce stores processing many orders daily, daily backups may not be sufficient. If you take 100 orders between midnight and when a disaster strikes at 11pm, a daily backup would restore you to a state where those 100 orders never existed. Some backup solutions offer near-real-time or hourly backups for these situations.
Where Should You Store Backups?
On Your Hosting Server
Most hosting control panels (including cPanel, which comes with all Nyasa Cloud plans) have built-in backup tools that can store backups directly on your hosting account. This is convenient and fast to restore from, but it’s not a substitute for off-site storage — a server problem could affect your backup files too.
Cloud Storage
Services like Google Drive, Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, and Amazon S3 are excellent destinations for off-site backups. They’re cheap (or free up to a certain storage limit), reliable, and accessible from anywhere.
WordPress backup plugins like UpdraftPlus, BlogVault, and BackupBuddy can automatically send backups directly to your cloud storage account on a schedule.
Your Local Computer
Downloading a backup to your own computer is a valid off-site strategy. The limitation is that it requires manual action (or a script), and your computer needs to have enough storage space. It also doesn’t help you if you need to access the backup while traveling.
Dedicated Backup Services
Services like CodeGuard and BlogVault are purpose-built for website backups. They monitor your site continuously, maintain versioned backup history, and provide easy restore tools. They cost more than DIY solutions but offer peace of mind and professional-grade reliability.
How to Back Up a WordPress Website
WordPress is the platform most Malawian websites run on, so here’s a practical walkthrough.
Option 1: Using Your Hosting Control Panel (cPanel)
- Log into your cPanel (usually at
yourdomain.com/cpanel) - Navigate to Backup or Backup Wizard
- Choose “Full Backup” to download a complete backup of your account
- Select a backup destination (home directory or remote FTP/email)
- Wait for the backup to complete and download it
This is the most complete backup method as it includes all files, databases, email accounts, and settings.
Option 2: UpdraftPlus Plugin (Recommended)
UpdraftPlus is the most popular WordPress backup plugin, with over three million active installations. The free version is excellent for most websites.
Setup:
- Install and activate UpdraftPlus from the WordPress plugin directory
- Go to Settings → UpdraftPlus Backups
- Set your backup schedule (e.g., daily for files, daily for database)
- Choose your remote storage destination (Google Drive, Dropbox, S3, etc.) and connect your account
- Run a manual backup immediately to test the setup
Once configured, UpdraftPlus will run backups automatically on your chosen schedule and send them directly to your cloud storage.
Option 3: Nyasa Cloud Automatic Backups
All Nyasa Cloud hosting plans include automatic daily backups. These are stored on our infrastructure and can be restored through your cPanel or by contacting our support team.
However — and this is important — we strongly recommend you also maintain your own independent backups using one of the methods above. Hosting provider backups are a safety net; your own backups are your primary protection.
How to Restore from a Backup
Having a backup is only useful if you can actually restore from it. Here’s the general process:
Restoring via cPanel
- Log into cPanel
- Navigate to Backup or File Manager
- If restoring the entire account, use the backup restoration tool in cPanel
- If restoring just files, upload them via File Manager or FTP
- If restoring just the database, go to phpMyAdmin, select your database, drop all tables, and import your backed-up SQL file
Restoring via UpdraftPlus
- Go to Settings → UpdraftPlus Backups in WordPress
- Under Existing Backups, find the backup you want to restore
- Click Restore and select which components to restore (plugins, themes, uploads, database, or all)
- Follow the on-screen steps
UpdraftPlus will download the backup from your cloud storage and restore it automatically. This usually takes a few minutes.
Testing Your Restores
This is the step most people skip — and then discover the problem when it’s too late. Periodically test that your backups actually work by restoring to a test environment or a staging site. A backup that fails to restore isn’t a backup; it’s a false sense of security.
Common Backup Mistakes to Avoid
Relying only on your hosting provider’s backups. These are helpful but not sufficient on their own. Always maintain independent off-site backups.
Never testing a restore. Set a reminder to test your backup restoration every few months.
Overwriting old backups. Keep multiple versions — at least 2–4 weeks of daily backups. If a problem is introduced today but you only notice it in 10 days, you need a backup from before the problem.
Forgetting the database. A backup of just your WordPress files, without the database, cannot restore your site. Always back up both together.
Irregular backup schedules. Set up automatic backups so you don’t have to remember. Manual backup routines always eventually break down.
How Much Storage Do Backups Need?
This depends on your website size. A basic WordPress site with a moderate amount of content might be 500 MB–2 GB. A WooCommerce store with thousands of product images could be 10 GB or more.
For cloud storage, Google Drive gives you 15 GB free, which is enough for most small sites to store several weeks of backups. For larger sites, Google One (paid) or Amazon S3 (pay-per-use, very affordable) are good options.
When choosing how many backup versions to keep, balance storage cost against the risk of needing an older backup. Keeping 30 days of daily backups is a reasonable standard for most businesses.
Final Thoughts
A website backup is like insurance. You hope you never need it, but when you do, you’re extraordinarily glad you have it.
The time to set up a proper backup system is now — before anything goes wrong. The process takes an hour to set up properly, and then it runs automatically in the background while you focus on your business.
Don’t wait until you’re staring at a broken website, wondering if all that work is just gone. Take the 60 minutes today, get your backups configured, test a restore, and then put your mind at rest.
Nyasa Cloud hosting plans include automatic daily backups as a built-in feature. Pair that with your own off-site backup and you’ll have a solid, professional backup strategy in place. See our hosting plans.
