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    In today's digital world your website's most valuable asset is its data. A cyber attack, a corrupted database, a botched plugin update or a server failure can wipe out all your work in minutes. The only way to protect yourself from these moments is a sound website backup and site backup strategy. In this article we walk through the website backup process step by step.

    1. What Is a Website Backup and Why Is It Vital?

    A website backup is the process of copying and storing your site's source files (images, themes, plugins, PHP files) and its database (posts, membership data, order history) somewhere else, safely. Backing your site up regularly gives you these advantages:

    • Preventing data loss: Your data survives hardware failures on the server.
    • A security guarantee: After ransomware or a virus infection you can return to a clean version of your site immediately.
    • Easy migration: When you move your site to another host, your backups are ready to go.

    2. Manual Website Backup Methods, Step by Step

    If you don't use an automation tool, you can back your website up manually. The process has two stages: backing up the files and backing up the database.

    A. Backing up files with FTP and FileZilla

    You can use FileZilla, one of the most popular FTP clients, to download the code and image files from your web server:

    1. Have the FTP credentials from your hosting panel to hand.
    2. Open FileZilla and connect to your server with them.
    3. In the right-hand panel, find your main web folder, usually named public_html or httpdocs .
    4. Select everything in the folder, drag it into a local folder on your computer and start the download.

    B. Backing up the MySQL database with phpMyAdmin

    Once the files are downloaded over FTP, you need to back up the MySQL database — the brain of your site:

    1. From your hosting control panel (cPanel, Plesk and so on), open phpMyAdmin .
    2. Select the database belonging to your website.
    3. Click "Export" in the top menu.
    4. Choose SQL as the format, press "Go" and download your .sql file.

    ⚠️ Critical: the 3-2-1 rule

    Never leave the backup files on the same server your website runs on. If the server fails, your backups go with it. Keep at least one copy in cloud storage (Google Drive, Dropbox and so on) or on your local disk.

    3. Backing Up via Control Panels (cPanel and Plesk)

    Besides manual backups you can also take a single archive (.tar.gz) through your hosting provider's control panel:

    • cPanel backup: After signing in, use the Backup Wizard to download both your site's files and your database to your computer as a single archive.
    • Plesk backup: Open the Backup Manager from the right-hand menu, create a new backup and pull it down to your computer.

    4. Automated Website Backup: Why Yedekalma?

    Manual backups may look safe, but they are exposed to human error. Forgetting to take one, not backing up before an update, or a file that downloaded incompletely can all leave your site completely unrecoverable when a crisis hits.

    Yedekalma.com makes this process fully automatic:

    • Fully automatic backups, 24/7: Your website is backed up automatically at the intervals you choose (daily, weekly and so on) without you doing a thing.
    • Client-side AES-256 encryption: Every backed-up file is encrypted with AES-256 using your own passphrase before it leaves your server. You never hand your security to anyone else.
    • Zero server load: Thanks to our smart backup algorithms your server suffers no freezes, slowdowns or excessive CPU and bandwidth usage.
    • One-click restore: Something went wrong? Within seconds you can go to the backup for any day from your dashboard and restore your site with a single click.

    Frequently Asked Questions

    How do you back up a website?

    You need all three parts together: the site files (via FTP/SFTP or your hosting file manager), the database (exported from phpMyAdmin or with mysqldump) and, if you have them, the mailboxes. If any one of the three is missing, your backup won't be enough to bring the site back up. When doing it by hand, make sure all three come from the same moment, otherwise you'll get inconsistencies on restore.

    How often should backups be taken?

    It depends how often your site changes: weekly for brochure sites that are rarely updated, daily for sites with regular content, hourly for e-commerce sites holding order and stock data. The test is simple: can you afford to lose the data created since your last backup?

    Is a cPanel backup enough?

    Usually not. A cPanel backup sits on the same server; if the server fails, the account is suspended or ransomware hits, the backup becomes unreachable too. The backup needs to be kept somewhere independent of your site, such as your own cloud account.

    How do you set up automated backups?

    With Yedekalma you upload a single PHP file to your site's root directory, connect the site from the panel and choose a backup frequency for each component (files, database, email). The archive is prepared on your own server and uploaded straight to your own cloud account, with the result reported back to the panel. You never install a plugin or share your FTP or database password.

    Back Up Your Website Automatically and Securely

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