WordPress Backup and Recovery: Complete Guide to Never Losing Your Site

Protect your content, your business, and your peace of mind – the smart way

Imagine waking up to find your website is gone. Maybe it’s been hacked. Maybe a plugin update broke everything. Maybe your host made a mistake.

Now imagine you had no backup.

Unfortunately, this is a reality many WordPress users face – especially those using cheap hosting or “DIY” setups. But the good news? With the right backup and recovery strategy, you never have to lose your website again.

At Red Jet, we’ve helped dozens of New Zealand businesses restore hacked, broken, or deleted websites often within hours. In this post, we’ll walk you through everything you need to know to keep your WordPress site safe and fully recoverable.

🛑 Why Backups Matter (and Why Most Sites Don’t Have Them Properly Set Up)

Backups aren’t just about peace of mind – they’re your safety net when things go wrong:

Hacked site? Restore from backup.
Failed update? Roll back easily.
Accidental deletion? No stress.

But here’s the catch:

Many site owners think they have backups only to find they’re incomplete, outdated, or stored on the same server that just crashed.

✅ That’s why at Red Jet, we include automated daily offsite backups as standard – stored securely, encrypted, and ready to restore.

📦 What Should a WordPress Backup Include?

A proper backup includes everything needed to restore your site, not just the text or images.

WordPress Files
- Themes
- Plugins
- Media uploads
- Core files
WordPress Database
- Posts and pages
- Comments
- Settings and configurations
- User data and WooCommerce orders
Configuration Files
- wp-config.php
- .htaccess or nginx.conf

🧠 Pro tip: Database-only backups aren’t enough. If your files are lost or corrupted, you’ll need a full file backup to recover.

🔁 How Often Should You Back Up?

It depends on your site activity:

Site Type	Suggested Backup Frequency
Static brochure site	Daily or Weekly
Blog or service site	Daily
WooCommerce store	Hourly or Real-time
Membership site	Real-time or every 6 hours

🚀 Red Jet offers real-time backups for high-traffic or transactional sites – so no customer data is ever lost.

🔐 Where Should You Store Your Backups?

Avoid keeping backups on the same server as your live site. If your server goes down, so do your backups.

Instead, store them:

In secure cloud storage (Amazon S3, Backblaze, Wasabi)
Through offsite backup tools like Jetpack, BlogVault, or ManageWP
Via your hosting provider (make sure it’s encrypted and separate)

🔒 Red Jet stores your backups offsite, encrypted, and we retain multiple versions for rollback flexibility.

🧰 Best WordPress Backup Tools (Free & Paid)

If you’re managing backups yourself, consider these plugins:

UpdraftPlus – Popular and reliable (free + paid)
BlogVault – Great for real-time backups, fast restores
Jetpack Backup – Real-time backup with cloud storage
WP Time Capsule – Incremental backups with offsite support

But remember: having a tool isn’t enough. It must be correctly configured and regularly tested.

💡 How Recovery Actually Works

Let’s say something goes wrong – here’s how a solid recovery process looks:

Identify the issue (hacked, broken, deleted, etc.)
Select the correct backup version
Restore files and/or database via the plugin, SSH, or control panel
Test site functionality before going fully live
Review logs to understand what caused the issue

🛠 At Red Jet, our recovery process is tested regularly and takes under 30 minutes for most sites. We also help identify the root cause to prevent repeat issues.

📉 Real Example: What Happens Without Backups

One client came to us after their previous host accidentally deleted their site during a migration. No backups. No recovery option. Five years of blog posts — gone.

Thankfully, we recovered most of the content using third-party tools and rebuilt the site – but the damage was done.

💬 “Wish we’d moved to Red Jet earlier – they now back up our site daily, automatically, and we never think about it.”

🧠 Final Thoughts: Set It and Forget It – But Set It Right

Backups aren’t glamorous, but they’re the most important thing you’ll ever set up for your website. And recovery shouldn’t be a fire drill – it should be fast, clean, and painless.

With Red Jet, your WordPress site is backed up daily, offsite, encrypted, and supported by humans who know how to fix things fast.

Want Peace of Mind?

Red Jet: Because “oops” shouldn’t mean starting over.