Every week your host sends a cheerful email: backup complete. It’s reassuring, and for most site owners it’s the only evidence they have that their website could be brought back if something went badly wrong.
Since 2007 I’ve been rescuing sites, and I’ve learned that this email tells you almost nothing. It tells you a process ran. It doesn’t tell you what was copied, where it went, or whether anyone could turn it back into a working website.
Why “backup complete” means little
The most common failure isn’t a missing backup. It’s a backup stored on the same server as the site. When the server is compromised, the attacker, or the ransomware, reaches the backups too. The second most common: a backup of the files but not the database, which is like keeping the frame of a house and losing everything inside it.
The three questions to ask your host or developer
- Is the backup stored somewhere other than this server?
- Does it include the database, not just the files?
- When was one last restored onto a clean server, and by whom?
A 20-minute restore test
You don’t need to wait for a disaster to find out. Restore last night’s backup to a temporary subdomain, then click through the pages that make you money: the contact form, the checkout, the login. If any of them fail, you’ve just learned something for free.
If you or your developer work from the command line, the core of it looks like this (replace the file name and domains with your own):
$ wp db import backup-latest.sql
$ wp search-replace 'example.com' 'restore.example.com' --all-tables
$ wp option get siteurl
https://restore.example.comKeep the test copy private (password-protect the subdomain) and delete it when you are done, so a half-restored copy of your site is never left open to the public.
A backup only counts once someone has restored it.
What good looks like
Off-site, files and database together, kept for at least thirty days, and restored at least once by a person who writes down what happened. That is the standard you should expect from whoever looks after your site. Every ProWebCare plan includes off-site backups with 30-day retention; see what each plan covers.
Not sure yours would pass? Ask for a free site review and we’ll check your backups as part of it, and tell you plainly. For the reasons backups fail in the first place, read Why Your Backups Will Fail When You Need Them.
