WordPress Backup without Plugin

WordPress is mostly used CMS (Content Management System) worldwide. The reason for wordpress usage is its flexibility and availability for plugins according to users. Although, there are a log of plugins that are available for backup, but all are premium and requires payment to upgrade. Without upgrading to premium plugin, you cannot avail the useful features.

In this article, I’m going to guide you, how can you take a backup of your wordpress website without any plugin. Before continue further, I will tell you some most important things regarding the wordpress installation, that will help you to understand wordpress.

WordPress

WordPress installation contains three basic directories and multiple php files that can be found within root directory of your website. If you are using a cPanel and you want to use your primary domain with wordpress, then your root directory will be public_html.

So, in case of wordpress with your primary domain, you will find three basic directories/folder of wordpress installation within File Manager > public_html. These directories’ names are wp-admin, wp-content and wp-includes while the basic files are like index.php, wp-config.php etc.

For a wordpress backup, wp-content directory/folder and wp-config.php file is very important. The wp-content folder contains your Themes, Plugins and uploads and wp-config.php file contains your database information. So, if you want to take backup of your wordpress, it is recommended to compress complete directory of your wordpress installation and find the related database from wp-config.php file. I’ve installed a test website, from where, we will learn, how to get backup.

The screenshot given below is showing that how a wordpress installation looks like. Before taking backup, please make it sure that .htaccess file is visible as it is very important. If you cannot see, then click on settings (as pointing in screenshot) from top right corner and enable check mark on “Show hidden files” option.

After that, you need to select all files and folders. The easy way or I use is:

1- Make a Single Click on top folder

2- Scroll Down till last file

3- Press Shift and single click on last file

With this way, all files will be selected as it will look like as below:

Now click on Compress button, that I’ve pointed with red circle in screenshot given above. Select Compression Type as Zip Archive and press Compress files button as showing below:

After a successful compression, you will see this popup screen:

Now, it’s time to find out database related to this wordpress installation. Find the file wp-config.php and Follow the steps:

1- Right Click on wp-config.php file

2- Click on Edit, another Window will appear, press Edit button again

3- You will see contents of wp-config.php file, scroll and find this row: define( ‘DB_NAME’,

You will see the database name, in our case, it is wp235 as you can see in screenshot:

To find out the database, go to cPanel home and select phpMyAdmin under Databases and you will see all your database used within cPanel. We need to find database with name wp235 and click on it. The database tables will expand on right side, now click on Export button as showing in screenshot:

On next screen, select Custom option and select compression type gzip as showing in screenshot below and scroll down till end and press Go button.

Your database will start to download. Now, your wordpress backup is ready, you can make any changes to your wordpress site or can move it to any other web hosting.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *