Regular backups are crucial for managing WordPress websites, as they can save you from a lot of trouble in case of any unforeseen disaster. However, it is equally important to handle your backups securely, as backups can become inaccessible, corrupted, malware-infected, or incomplete. All these issues render backups useless, and imagine your site going down, and the only backups you have are corrupted or incomplete. It sounds frustrating, right? The whole point of taking backups is to be able to restore them when the need arises.
This is where testing backups come in handy. Testing your backups before restoring could save you from a lot of distress in the future. It is recommended that you make testing an integral part of your overall backup strategy. Testing backups of your website should be conducted from time to time, instead of saving it for when disaster strikes. That way, you will be prepared and can quickly restore a working backup to get your site up and running.
Testing WordPress backups can help diagnose why your website went down, discover errors in the backup, test modifications without affecting the live site, and check for incompatibility issues, among others. While there are many advantages to testing backups, the process can be time-consuming and difficult to implement. Let’s evaluate the major challenges associated with performing backup testing.
One of the biggest challenges of WordPress backup testing is creating a testing environment. This can be quite technical, particularly if you have multiple backup versions that need to be tested. You may need to create different testing environments. Tools like WampServer can help you create a local environment on your system. Or if you’re using a good managed WordPress hosting plan, you may be able to create staging sites to test on.
Once you have a test environment set up, you need to actually test your backups. You can either do this manually or with a plugin. Manually testing WordPress site backups yourself requires creating and downloading a backup of your site and uploading the backup on your local site. As you can see, manually testing is not exactly easy and requires you to use tools. On top of all these, you need to have the technical knowledge to handle any issues that arise during testing. It’s far easier to use a plugin.
Using plugins, you can create a testing environment with the click of a button. If your WordPress backup plugin offers a testing environment, that’s even better because then you don’t have to download and then upload your backups onto your testing environment over and over. For instance, BlogVault Backup Services is the only backup service that creates a testing environment on its own server. The burden of running processes is carried by BlogVault servers and not yours, which means your live site remains unaffected. With its Test Restore functionality, BlogVault automatically restores the backup on a test environment (usually called staging). The test environment expires in one week during which you can examine backups and on being satisfied, restore the backup of your choice without breaking a sweat.
To test backups using BlogVault Backup Services, you need to create and set up your BlogVault account, add your website to the dashboard, select your backup to test, and get to testing. Automated tools like BlogVault eliminate the hassles and risks associated with manual testing backups. It’s as easy as clicking a few buttons! And as mentioned before, there’s no stress on your server since everything is done on BlogVault’s end.
Disaster strikes when you least expect it. Testing backups from time to time is highly recommended. When things do go south, you know that you have a safety net to fall back on. And you can be certain it’s one without any holes. If you have any more tips for testing site backups or other tools you’d recommend, let us know in the comments section!