How to easily back up and restore WooCommerce

Backups -- It's a scary word. It's easy to think about how much time you have wasted on manual, complicated processes that involve databases and FTP directories.

All of this is a lie that we are happy to bust. It's thanks modern plugins, it's now fast and incredibly simple to make backups of WooCommerce and to restore them when necessary.

Backups are essential for your store and data. You might not be aware of how to make and manage backups without causing you headaches.

We'll show you today. Continue reading to learn how Jetpack backup can help you back up your store and how to restore it in an emergency.

Backups are important and what you should do if you need them

You might have noticed this notice on your Plugins Page if you've recently updated WooCommerce.

These are major updates that make it important to keep backups of your WooCommerce website. We expect that the update process will go smoothly. However, it is impossible to predict what the outcome might be. This is especially true if you have custom code, use third-party plugins, or haven’t updated your WooCommerce extensions or themes in a while.

A backup of your website is handy so that you can quickly roll back to the working version if you notice a problem or update.

Backups are essential in the event of a disaster . This could be a hacker site, server failure (which is unlikely but not impossible), or accidental deletion of files. It's crucial to ensure customer data is safe and accessible online. Find out more about backups, and why they are important.

Backups can save you from data loss and headaches.

How to backup your website without any hassle

There are many tools that can backup your WordPress database as well as some of your files. They vary in their price, benefits and ease-of-use. The jetpack backup is our favorite tool to back up WooCommerce. It offers:

  • Real-time and automatic daily backups for your entire website without any development experience.
  • Offsite storage allows you to restore a backup even if your website is down completely.
  • Automatic One-click restores to your mobile or desktop device. This will reduce the downtime for your store. You must get your store back online as soon as possible, as a minute of downtime can cost eCommerce businesses almost $9,000 on average.
  • Get activity Log so you can see every change made to your store and who made it.
  • With Jetpack Backup, you can restore your site from any location.

Jetpack's best feature is its ability to be set and forgotten. Your data will automatically be saved once backups have been activated. You don't even need to touch it again.

Learn more: 

Make sure you have a backup plan

You can choose between real-time and daily backups. Daily backups automatically take place every 24 hours. This is a great option for sites that are not regularly updated. Real time backups are performed when activity occurs on your website -- new pages, products, comments, orders, and so forth. So you always have a current backup. Real-time backups are recommended for eCommerce stores as a lot can change in 24 hours. It is not a good idea to lose your order information.

You can enable Jetpack backup in two ways:

  1. Get backups with a Jetpack plan Both Premium and Personal plans provide daily backups while Professional plans provide real-time backups. A full suite of features will be available to you, including downtime monitoring and brute-force attack protection, speed optimization tools, and priority support. Jetpack integrates with WooCommerce taxWooCommerce payments and WooCommerce shipping to offer valuable store management functionality.
  2. Purchase Jetpack Backup separately. You can buy and activate backups separately if you don't require any other functionality from a Jetpack plan.

Backups like a pro

What if your website goes down and you need to restore a backup of it? You don't have to be technical or take up much time.

You just need to navigate to the activity Log and find the point that you want to restore. Then click a button . See detailed instructions and screenshots here.

Jetpack will start restoring your data once you have given Jetpack the thumbs-up. The process may take a few minutes or several hours, depending on how large your site is. However, you can leave the page and you will receive an email once everything has been completed.

How to prevent data loss when you restore a backup

We are often asked how to restore a backup without losing any orders.

Prevention is the best option. staging website is something we recommend. This duplicate store can be used to test major changes. This feature is often included in hosting packages. You can also create one with Jetpack by restoring a backup to a different location.

Real-time backups can also be a great solution as they preserve all changes to your site as they occur, instead of once per day. This prevents you from losing orders that occurred within the last 24 hours before you restore a backup.

This process can be used to prevent data loss if you don't have a staging site or daily backups.

  1. Temporarily stop all orders and edits to products. You can use a plugin such as Maintenance Mode to help you manage this gracefully.
  2. Jetpack Backup allows you to make an backup at any time.
  3. Proceed with your plugin/extension/other major site update(s).
  4. Backups should be restored if something breaks. If it is not broken, or if you spot minor bugs, then proceed.
  5. You can either put your site in maintenance mode or bring it back online. You can also make an additional backup on-demand before making any changes.

This will prevent you from restoring a backup without your most recent orders.

Here are some final tips to help you manage your store's backups

These are some additional things you should keep in mind when backing up and restoring data using WooCommerce.

  • Keep your backups off-site Your backups won't be able to help you if your site is damaged or becomes inaccessible. Jetpack automatically stores backups on your site, but you can also download copies for storage locally.
  • Do not restore to a live website. If it is impossible, limit backup/restore activity during quiet periods. Your site traffic can be found in your WordPress dashboard, or in Google Analytics.
  • You can make partial backups with some tools. This is a time-saving option that could save you a lot of time. However, be cautious -- forgetting to restore or back up core WordPress files could cause your store to fail!

Backups can save you time, money, and headaches.

Backups of your website are not something that you should only do in the event of a disaster or an accident. This is a great practice that will save you tons of headaches when updating your store, or changing its design or functionality.

You can save both time and money by regularly backing up, properly restoring them, and managing them according to the tips.


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