How to backup your Divi website

If you lost your website tomorrow, would it be a big deal?

yes? You need to back up your Divi website today.

Many things can go wrong with your Divi website and you need to have a backup implemented for when they do. Your site could get hacked, or infected with malware, WordPress, Divi, or plugin updates could break your site, or you could break your own site with a bad line of code.

When these website emergencies occur you need to have a backup that can be used to fix or restore your website.

What is a Divi backup?

A Divi backup is full a copy of your website files and database that is stored separately from where your website is hosted. The backup can then be used to restore or replace your broken site if and when required.

How often should I back up my Divi website?

How regularly you should backup your website depends on how often you are updating your websites content, plugins, and theme, but a general guideline would be;

• Most good hosts will offer free full daily backups of your database and files and most will keep these for at least 30 days.
• Back up your Divi website before updating WordPress, Divi Theme, or plugin files as these updates can cause conflicts and break your website.
• Schedule backups with respect to your content publication schedule. If you are only blogging once a month, then you don’t need to make multiple backups every day.
• Make a full manual backup every month or two as a secondary backup to the more regular automated backup solutions your host may offer.

How do I make a backup of my Divi website?

There are many ways to back up a Divi website and you should have at least one backup system in place.

Personally, and for the Divi Theme Examples website I use three backup solutions which are;

1. Daily free backups via my Siteground hosting dashboard
2. Weekly backups using the free Updraft Plus plugin
3. Monthly manual backups to an external hard drive

1. Make a Divi backup with Siteground hosting

Siteground is one of the four recommended hosting providers for Divi and they offer free daily backup solutions for all of their hosting plans. You can restore your full Divi website or just the parts you need, such as files, databases, and emails.

Siteground backups are available for a rolling 30-day period after creation for shared hosting plans and 7 days for cloud hosting plans.

To access the Siteground backup area you will need to log into your account and browse Site Tools > Security > Backups.

In the backup section of your dashboard, you will see the 30 days of automated system backups made by SiteGround. You will also see a section where you can create up to on-demand backups. The GrowBig and GoGeek hosting plans allow you to create 5 on-demand backups for free and the StartUp hosting plan allows you to create them for an additional fee.

To create a manual backup in Siteground you just need to look for the Create New Backup heading and enter a name for your backup. Click the Create button and you will see a notification that says Backup Creation in Progress. Once the backup has been processed you will see a notification to tell you it is successful and you will then be able to restore it along with any of the past 30 days automated backups.

To restore a backup in Siteground in Site Tools > Security > Backups you can see the manage backups table that lists all of your available backup snapshots. The table will list the date of the backup, the backup type , and a 3 vertical dots icon.

You can click on the 3 dots icon (also known as the Kebab menu icon) for any of the available backup dates and choose to Restore All Files and Databases, Restore all Files, Restore All Databases, or Resotre all Emails.

Each type of backup restoration will have different options for you to choose. You can select to restore all files or use the file browser to select only the files you need to restore. You can use this to restore only selected plugins or files for example. The database and email options will allow you to choose all or specific databases and email accounts to restore too.

Once you have made your backups and restored them, you can then see the history of your restores for the past 14 days in Site Tools > Security > Backups > Restore History.

2. Make a Divi backup with Updraft Plus plugin

The Updraft Plus plugin is a popular backup, restore, and clone option forWordPress and Divi users and is regularly at the top of peoples recommended backup plugin lists. I personally use Updraft Plus plugin and have been happy with the way it creates backups and the ease of restoring those files.

Using the Siteground backup & restore features is my go to backup solution but I like to have Updraft backps as they are 100% remote from Siteground servers.

Key Features of UpdraftPlus include;

• Highest-rating backup and restore plugin at wordpress.org (4.8 stars out of 5.0)
• A free version is suitable for most people
• Multi-site (i.e. WPMU/WordPress Network) compatible.
• Easy to set up and restore backups
• Backs up limitless non-WordPress files and external databases.
• UpdraftPlus use Divi for its own website!

You can check out the comparison between the free and premium Updraft Plus to see which suits your needs. I personally use the free plugin as saving backups to Dropbox is included in the free version.

UpdraftPlus is available as a free plugin (download via the WordPress repository) or as a premium plugin with annual prices from $70 (2 sites) to $195 (unlimited sites) and is available for purchase from the UpdraftPlus website.

To create Divi backups using the UpdarftPlus plugin you will need to follow 3 key steps;

• Install and activate your UpdraftPlus plugin via the Plugins section of your WordPress dashboard
• Set the frequency of the automatic backups and the number of backups to save at any one time
• Set the storage location where the backup file will be saved and follow the additional setup instructions that will follow according to your selection

Your backups will then be displayed in the Existing backups section of the admin area. From here you can download, delete, or restore and of your backups as required.

3. Make a Divi backup manually

Manual backups require a little more technical know-how (or the ability to follow the instructions from WordPress) but it is a good way to know exactly what you are backing up and will help you to fully understand the actual workings of your Divi website.

Having said that, the availability of the built-in backup options in almost every hosting plan and the simple backup plugin option like UpdraftPlus mean that there is not much need to manually create a backup of your Divi website anymore.

As my 3rd backup option I create a semi-manual Divi backup using the UpdraftPlus plugin but rather than sending it to the remote storage that is set in the backup schedule, I download it and store it on an external hard drive. This may never get used but if my hosting were to crash at the same time I lost access to my Google Drive, then I have a website copy on a physical drive in my possession.

To create a manual backup of your website using UpdraftPlus you can click on the Backup Now button to create a backup and then download the associated files once they are completed.

How to make Divi Builder backups?

The Divi framework has a backup feature that allow you to save various Divi settings, options, and templates.

Whislt these will be backed up as part of a hosting or plugin backup, it can be useful to export them separately too.

The key elements of your Divi website that can be downloaded as a backup from Divi would include;

• Divi Theme Options
• Divi Customizer Settings
• Divi Theme Builder templates
• Divi Layouts

The Divi portability system allows you to import and export several parts of your Divi website via several places such as your Theme Customizeradmin area, Divi library, and Divi Builder.

You will see an icon with 1 up and 1 down arrow which signifies that content can be backed up using the Divi portability system, or in the Divi layouts library you can click on the Import & Export button to open up the portability modal.

Final Thoughts on backups

Have a quick think about how much your website is worth to you and how you would feel if you lost it all tomorrow.

Your site itself may have cost you $1000s or many hours of your own time to build and it is now hopefully generating your income directly or via paying clients. You do not want to loose this for the sake of not setting up a backup schedule.

If you don’t have a backup in place already, please do it now!

And, once you have set up your chosen backup method, test it to make sure it works and you know how to restore your site to a previously working version. Testing your backup is a lot less stressful to do before that dreaded day comes when you may actually need it.

What backup options do you use for your Divi website?