You have multiple backup layers running on a Flashcloud-hosted WordPress site, automatic by default. Plus optional plugin-level backups for extra granularity.
What's already running
Server-level (us)
- Daily full backups of your hosting account, including WordPress files and database.
- 30-day retention by default.
- One-click restore from the portal — see Backup options.
This catches the worst case: the entire site is corrupted, deleted, or hacked. We can roll back to yesterday in minutes.
Per-WordPress-site (us)
Beyond hosting-account-wide backups, the portal's per-WordPress-site management has its own Backups tab:
- Go to Services → click hosting → WordPress tile → click a site card.
- Open the Backups tab.
- View existing backups; create on-demand backups; restore granularly.
These are scoped to a single WordPress install — useful when you have multiple sites and want per-site backup management.
Plugin-level backups (UpdraftPlus etc.)
For application-aware backups, install a WordPress backup plugin. The two leaders:
UpdraftPlus
- Free tier covers most needs; paid tier adds incremental, cloud destinations, multi-site.
- Schedule daily/weekly with one click.
- Backup destinations: Google Drive, Dropbox, S3, FTP, email — or local on the server.
- Restore granularly — files only, database only, even individual tables.
- Wide compatibility, simple UI.
BackWPup
- Free, more configurable.
- More technical UI.
- Same destinations.
- Better for power users who want fine control.
To install: wp-admin → Plugins → Add New → search "UpdraftPlus" → Install → Activate. Configure schedule and destination.
Why use plugin-level backups when our server-level is already there?
Different strengths:
- Server-level: full hosting account, daily, simple restore. Best for "everything broke."
- Plugin-level: WordPress-aware, configurable schedule, off-site destinations, per-table restore. Best for "I broke this specific thing" or "I want copies on Google Drive."
Many sites run both. Server-level for disaster recovery; plugin-level for application-aware quick rollbacks.
Off-site backups
The most resilient setup keeps backups outside our infrastructure entirely:
- UpdraftPlus → Google Drive — free up to 15GB.
- BackWPup → Amazon S3 — pennies per GB at scale.
- Manual export — periodic download to your local machine, archived.
For business-critical sites, having at least one off-site backup is a strong safety net. If our entire infrastructure goes down (rare but possible), you have your own copy.
What to back up
A complete WordPress backup includes:
- Files:
- WordPress core (wp-includes, wp-admin) — easily reinstalled, but worth backing up.
- wp-content (themes, plugins, uploads) — your customizations.
- wp-config.php — database credentials and configuration.
- .htaccess — URL rewrites, security rules.
- Database: all your content (posts, pages, products, orders, comments, settings).
Most plugins back up all of these by default. Exclude only deliberately (e.g., if you've moved uploads to a CDN and don't need them in the backup).
Schedule recommendations
For typical sites:
- Database backup daily — content changes daily, you want recent restore points.
- Files backup weekly — files change less; full file backup weekly is plenty.
- Pre-upgrade backup before any plugin or core update — UpdraftPlus and similar can run a backup automatically before each update.
For heavy-traffic e-commerce or rapidly-changing sites:
- Database backup hourly — orders are coming in fast.
- Files backup daily — uploads happen frequently.
- Triple-redundant: server-level + plugin-level + off-site — multiple layers of safety.
Restoring
From server-level (us)
- Go to Services → click hosting → Backups tile.
- Pick a backup point.
- Choose what to restore (files, databases, email, all).
- Confirm.
The restore takes minutes for typical sites. Active sessions during restore may see brief errors; warn users if you're doing a major restore during business hours.
From UpdraftPlus
wp-admin → UpdraftPlus → Existing Backups.- Pick a backup.
- Click Restore — pick what to restore (files, db, plugins, themes, uploads).
- Confirm.
UpdraftPlus is application-aware, so it handles WordPress-specific restoration (active plugins, current options) more gracefully than a raw file restore.
Pre-update backup workflow
A safety pattern: before any plugin or core update:
- Take a fresh backup (UpdraftPlus has a "Backup Now" button).
- Run the update.
- Test the site.
- If something breaks, restore from the backup.
UpdraftPlus's auto-backup-before-update feature can automate this. Worth turning on.
Power-user note
For very large sites (10GB+), plugin backups become slow and timeout-prone. Better:
- Server-level backups for full account.
- Database-only backups via cron for incremental capture.
- rsync to push file changes to off-site storage continuously.
Or move to a CMS that handles backups natively (Statically, Sanity, etc.). For traditional WordPress, the daily server-level backup remains the workhorse.