For a static site that hardly ever changes, once a week backups are probably fine. For sites where new enquiries are submitted, orders/bookings are made, or other transactions are processed, once a week backups mean that everything between the most recent backup and the following Tuesday would be lost including all orders/bookings/enquiries.
For a site that is genuinely active, the minimum should be daily backups. If a site processes payments or carries out transactions, even a few hours of data loss can result in direct financial loss.
For a site that carries out monetary transactions, IT backups should be stored offsite to ensure they are safe from loss, if the website is compromised or hosting is terminated/suspnded . The only effective way to restore a site is to store backups offsite.
For any website that operates remotely, it is vital that backups of transactions, enquiries, orders, and bookings be stored offsite.
It’s important to know what to include in a backup. WordPress simply means the files and the database. The files consist of your theme, your plugins, your uploads, and your software. Meaning an incomplete backup without one of these components would mean having half of a site. Restoring the files means having an empty site since the database would be missing, and restoring the database, well, would have your content with nothing to display it. Most reliable backup plugins, for example, UpdraftPlus, backup both for you, but it’s still worth checking your settings.
A lot of people fail to realize they also must test the restore. Backing up something that has never been restored is a backup in which you have to hope for the best. It is good practice to perform a restore of your backup on occasion to a testing copy of the site. It is not because backups typically fail, but because the sad reality is the first time you need a backup is the worst time to find out it doesn’t restore the way you would expect it to due to misconfigured steps or the backup only being a part of the site.
Automated attacks on WordPress sites happen regularly, not to single out your business. Attacks occur when bots check thousands of sites for outdated plugins and themes. A security breach is one of the most common reasons you rely on a backup that you didn’t need to take preventively. If your current solution is to trust your hosting company does something, then you should find out what that something actually is, how often it’s done, where the backup is stored, and if anyone has actually tried to restore from it.
