How To Backup WordPress Using cPanel in 9 Easy Steps

Last Updated on December 28, 2022 by Steve

We recently published a post on our blog about how to backup WordPress using UpdraftPlus. In my opinion its the best backup plugin for WordPress.

cPanel is a popular control panel that is offered to shared hosting and virtual private servers.  Check out this other useful article on backing up sites using cPanel and restoring them if need be.

While you should have an automated WordPress backup solution in place, having multiple backup systems is something we strongly recommend. This way if one of your backup solutions fails, you have a secondary backup system to call upon.

The guide below details how to manually backup WordPress using cPanel

Step One:

Login to your cPanel account

Navigate to your login page for cPanel. This is normally your domain name or IP address followed by the port :2083

e.g. https://bestwordpress.solutions:2083/

cPanel Login Page

Step Two:

Under the files section, click on the backup Wizard Icon

cPanel Backup Wizard Icon

Step Three:

Click on the “Backup” button

cPanel Backup Wizard Select Backup Option

Step Four:

If you want to backup your complete hosting account then click Full Backup button or Under Select Partial Backup you can backup specific parts of your WordPress site.

cPanel Click Full Backup Button or Select Partial Backup

Step Five:

In this tutorial we will choose Partial Backup option instead of Full Backup.

Under the “Select Partial Backup” header, click on the “Home Directory” link

cPanel Partial Backup Selected

Step Six:

Click on the “Home Directory” button to download a compressed copy of your home directory.

Depending upon the size of your site, this may take a little while

cPanel Home Directory Option Selected

Step Seven:

Now that you have a copy of your home directory on your local machine, the next step is to download a copy of your WordPress database

First click on the “Go Back” link to get to the previous page

cPanel Click On Go Back Link

Step Eight:

Under the “Select Partial Backup” header, click on the “MySQL Databases” link

cPanel MySQL Databases Link Selected

Step Nine:

Finally, click on the link for your WordPress database, to download a copy to your local machine

cPanel WordPress Database Download

Now that you have a local copy of your WordPress files, we recommend that you archive them in a suitable location.

You may even want to upload them to an offsite data storage provider such as Dropbox

Summary

If you’ve followed all the steps in the guide, you will now have a copy of your WordPress files and database.

Next we’ll discuss how you can restore these files using cPanel.

Author

  • Steve

    I have been in the information technology field since I left the United States Army over twenty years ago. Skills and experience include a Bachelor's degree in Computer Information Systems with a Specialization in Databases and a Master's in Computer Information Systems Management.

    I fell in love with WordPress over 10 years ago and spend most of my time designing, building and administering WordPress based sites. I am fluent in multiple programming languages including Python, PHP, SQL, Java and C#.

Leave a Comment

%d bloggers like this: