Think you don't need a backup? Let me give you first-hand experience why you need one right now.
I will start with saying that I always have a backup of my own site and my client’s sites. I also have multiple backups of my computer (that is a story for another day). You may say I am diligent, or you may put it another way but regardless of the description, I am meticulous when it comes to backup up my files including my website.
I was in my site, loading a blog post into the back end and I noticed I had some plugins that needed to be updated. I am also diligent about updating my site so I took a backup and started updating the plugins. The one mistake I made was I should have tested the updates on a development site. I do it for my client sites but for whatever reason, I didn’t do it on my own site that day. I check the site after every plugin update and all looks good until I look at the internal pages. I now have an error message that is related to the theme. Yikes! I can’t leave it and I don’t have a lot of time to figure out the fix at that moment. I had also just posted to Facebook and Twitter and I was expecting(hoping) for traffic to my site. I don’t have a lot of options at this point but I do have a backup so I was quickly able to revert my site to the last backup I had. It took a few minutes and my site was back, without the error message. I now have some time to test the plugins and theme update in my development site and determine which plugin/theme is the issue. I should have done this before updating on a live site. Whew! Website disaster averted!
I have had a handful of times when a backup of a website has saved me from hours of work. It also gives me peace of mind that I can quickly recover and restore a website that I have a backup of.
If you are curious about which plugin I use to backup I my site and the sites I manage, it is UpDraftPlus or All-In-One-Migration. I have been using them for years.
Affiliate link to find out more about UpdraftPlus
