Earlier this week I was hacked and my sites were suspended temporarily. In order to get them up and running, I had to delete the infected directory, which happened to house my personal blog. Unfortunately, when I revived my blog, I never got around to setting up backups. Tsk tsk. As someone who is a big advocate for backing everything up, it’s embarrassing. I use CrashPlan and Time Machine on my iMac. This blog is backed up. But my personal blog and development sites? Nope. Somehow that slipped by.
Using this incident as a wakeup call, I spent some time getting my ducks in a row. I purchased BackupBuddy and installed it on all my sites. Next time this happens (because let’s face it, it’s the internet and there probably will be a next time), I’ll be prepared.
I want you to be prepared too. You put so much time and effort into your site, do you really want to risk it? Below I’ve compiled a list of plugins that will keep your site backed up.
free backup plugins
paid backup plugins
There are tons of other options out there, but above are just some of the more popular ones. I used to use BackWPup, but I started getting errors after using it for quite awhile. I have used it on client sites with no problems though, so it just depends on your site’s setup. I’m fairly new to BackupBuddy, but it seems to be highly recommended. I know that everyone has budgets and wants to keep costs down, but sometimes it’s worth investing a little bit, especially if your site is your business. I haven’t tried any of the others listed, so I can’t tell you how good they are, so take these recommendations with a grain of salt.
Do you have a backup system in place? What do you use? Share your recommendations in the comments below!
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