WordPress backups come in three types: database backups, file backups, and full backups. Understanding the difference helps you choose the right backup for your situation, save time and storage space, and ensure you’re actually protecting what matters.
This beginner’s guide explains each backup type in plain language—what they include, when to use them, and how to choose wisely. By the end, you’ll know exactly what to backup and when, making your WordPress site protection strategy both effective and efficient.
What You’ll Learn
- Understanding database backups
- Understanding file backups
- What is a full backup?
- What each backup type protects
- When to use each backup type
- Best practices for backup selection
WordPress Backup Components
Database Backups Explained
Your WordPress database is the brain of your website—it contains all your dynamic content and settings. Think of it as a giant spreadsheet storing everything that changes on your site. When you publish a blog post, add a product, approve a comment, or change a setting, that information goes into the database.
What Makes Database Backups Special: They’re relatively small (usually 5-100 MB for most sites) but contain all your valuable content. Database backups are fast to create and quick to restore. They capture the “what” of your site—what content exists, what users have accounts, what settings are configured.
Database Structure: WordPress uses MySQL or MariaDB databases with multiple tables. The wp_posts table holds your posts and pages. The wp_options table stores settings. The wp_users table contains user accounts. The wp_comments table stores all comments. Plugin data lives in various tables they create.
When Database Changes: Every time you create content, receive orders, approve comments, or adjust settings, the database changes. This means your database changes frequently on active sites—potentially dozens or hundreds of times per day on busy sites.
File Backups Explained
WordPress files are the “look and feel” of your site—the code that determines how your site appears and functions. Files change less frequently than databases, typically only when you update WordPress, install plugins/themes, or upload media.
What Files Include: Your WordPress installation consists of three main file categories. Core files are the WordPress software itself (wp-admin, wp-includes, and root files). Plugin files add functionality. Theme files control appearance. Then there’s your uploads folder containing images, videos, and documents.
File Characteristics: Files are usually larger than databases. A typical WordPress site has 1-10 GB of files, though media-heavy sites can reach 50+ GB. Most of these files rarely change—WordPress core files only change during updates, plugin files change when you update plugins, theme files change with theme updates or customizations.
Static vs Dynamic: Unlike database content that changes constantly, files remain static until you deliberately change them. Your theme’s PHP files stay exactly the same from one day to the next unless you edit them or update the theme.
Full Site Backups
Full backups combine both database and files into one complete package. It’s like taking a snapshot of your entire website at a specific moment in time. Restore a full backup and you get everything exactly as it was—content, design, functionality, settings, media—all in one operation.
Why Full Backups Matter: They’re the safest backup type because nothing is left out. If your site gets hacked, server crashes, or something catastrophic happens, a full backup restores everything. You don’t need to worry about whether you backed up the right components—you backed up everything.
The Complete Package: Full backups include your entire database, all WordPress core files, every plugin and theme file, your complete uploads folder, configuration files (wp-config.php, .htaccess), and any custom code or modifications you’ve made.
Trade-offs: Full backups are larger and slower than database-only or file-only backups. They consume more storage space and take longer to upload to cloud storage. But they provide complete peace of mind—everything you need to restore your site exists in one backup file.
What’s Included in Each Backup Type?
Database Backup Contents
Posts and Pages: Every blog post, page, and custom post type you’ve created. The full content, titles, slugs, publication dates, and metadata. Restoring database brings back all your written content.
Comments: All approved, pending, spam, and trashed comments. Commenter names, emails, websites, comment content, and timestamps. Your community conversations are preserved.
Users and Roles: All user accounts including administrators, editors, authors, contributors, and subscribers. Usernames, emails, roles, permissions, and profile information. Note: passwords are encrypted hashes, not plain text.
Settings and Options: WordPress settings from Settings menu (site title, tagline, permalink structure, timezone, etc.). Reading settings, discussion settings, media settings—everything configured in WordPress admin.
Plugin Data: Settings and data stored by plugins. Contact form submissions, SEO configurations, security settings, analytics data, custom fields—anything plugins store in the database.
WooCommerce Orders and Products: For e-commerce sites, this is critical. Product listings, pricing, inventory, customer orders, order statuses, shipping information, customer data, and transaction history all live in the database. Losing this data means losing your business records.
File Backup Contents
WordPress Core Files: The wp-admin folder (WordPress dashboard interface), wp-includes folder (WordPress core functionality), and root files like index.php, wp-config.php, wp-load.php. These files make WordPress work.
Themes: Active theme and any inactive themes installed. All PHP templates, CSS stylesheets, JavaScript files, theme functions, and theme-specific images. Your site’s appearance depends on these files.
Plugins: Every plugin’s files including PHP code, JavaScript, CSS, images, and any additional resources. Plugins provide functionality—forms, SEO, security, e-commerce, caching. Losing plugin files means losing that functionality.
Uploads and Media: Everything in wp-content/uploads folder. Images you’ve uploaded, PDFs, videos, audio files, documents. All the media embedded in your posts and pages. This is often the largest component of file backups.
wp-config.php: The configuration file containing database connection details (database name, username, password, host), security keys and salts, table prefix, and custom PHP constants. This file is essential for connecting WordPress to your database.
.htaccess: Server configuration file controlling permalinks, redirects, security rules, caching rules, and access restrictions. Many plugins write to this file for functionality like pretty URLs and security hardening.
Choosing the Right Backup Type
When to Use Database-Only Backups
Frequent Content Updates: If you publish multiple posts daily, receive hundreds of comments, or run an active e-commerce store, database-only backups should run frequently. Schedule them hourly or every few hours to capture content changes without the overhead of backing up unchanged files.
Cost Efficiency: Database backups are tiny (10-100 MB typical) compared to full backups (1-10+ GB). If cloud storage costs matter, frequent database backups cost pennies while providing excellent content protection. Ten database backups cost less storage than one full backup.
Quick Backups: Need to backup before making risky changes to content or settings? Database-only backup completes in seconds. Perfect for “just in case” backups before bulk editing posts or changing critical settings.
WooCommerce Protection: E-commerce stores need frequent database backups (hourly recommended) to protect orders and customer data. Files rarely change, but new orders arrive constantly. Hourly database backups protect revenue data without wasting storage on unchanged files.
Limitations: Database-only backups won’t help if plugins break, themes malfunction, or files get corrupted. They only restore content and settings, not functionality or appearance.
When to Use File-Only Backups
Before Plugin/Theme Updates: About to update plugins or themes? File-only backup captures the current working versions. If update breaks something, restore files to previous working state without touching your database (preserving recent posts and comments).
After Customizations: Made custom modifications to theme files or created custom plugins? File-only backup preserves your work. Accidental overwrites or bad updates can erase customizations—file backups protect them.
When Files Changed, Database Didn’t: Redesigned your site’s appearance? Installed new plugins? Uploaded bulk media? These activities change files but not database. File-only backup efficiently captures these changes.
Media Library Protection: Photographers, videographers, and media-heavy sites have massive uploads folders but small databases. File-only backups protect your media library without repeatedly backing up an unchanged database.
Limitations: File-only backups don’t protect content, settings, or data. Your posts, pages, comments, users, and configurations aren’t included. You need both files AND database for complete restoration.
When to Use Full Backups
Pre-Major Changes: Before major updates (WordPress core version, PHP version upgrade, server migration), create full backup. These changes can break anything—better to have everything backed up.
Weekly/Monthly Scheduled Backups: Full backups should run regularly (weekly for most sites, daily for critical sites) to create complete restore points. They’re your safety net for catastrophic failures.
Before Going on Vacation: Leaving for two weeks? Create full backup before departing. If something breaks while you’re away, you have a complete restore point to return to.
After Successful Launch/Redesign: Completed website redesign and everything works perfectly? Create full backup of this “known good” state. Future you will appreciate having this restore point.
Compliance/Archive Requirements: Some industries require complete site backups retained for specific periods (financial records, healthcare compliance, legal documentation). Full backups meet these requirements.
Best For Peace of Mind: Full backups remove all doubt. Everything needed to restore your site exists in one backup. No wondering “did I backup the right components?”—you backed up everything.
Backup Size Considerations
Database Size Reality: Most WordPress databases are 10-100 MB. Content-heavy sites with years of posts might reach 500 MB – 2 GB. WooCommerce stores with thousands of orders might reach 1-5 GB. These compress well (often 80-90% reduction).
File Size Reality: WordPress core is ~50 MB. Themes and plugins add 100-500 MB typically. The uploads folder is the wildcard—might be 100 MB or might be 100 GB depending on media usage. Total file size: 500 MB – 20 GB for most sites, though some reach 50+ GB.
Storage Math: If your database is 50 MB and files are 2 GB, one full backup is 2.05 GB. Daily database backups for a month (30 × 50 MB) = 1.5 GB. Weekly full backups for a month (4 × 2.05 GB) = 8.2 GB. Smart strategy: daily database + weekly full = 9.7 GB vs. daily full backups = 61.5 GB. You save 85% storage.
Compression Benefits: Databases compress extremely well (80-90% typically). Files compress moderately (20-60% depending on content types—text compresses well, images already compressed). A 2 GB full backup might compress to 400 MB, saving significant storage and upload time.
Cost Calculation: Cloud storage averages $0.023 per GB per month (Google Drive, Dropbox). Storing 10 GB of backups costs $0.23/month. Storing 100 GB costs $2.30/month. Compression and smart backup strategies dramatically reduce costs.
Best Practices
Implement Tiered Strategy: Don’t choose just one backup type—use all three strategically. Hourly or daily database backups capture content changes. Weekly full backups create complete restore points. File backups before updates protect against broken changes.
3-2-1 Rule Applies to Types Too: Have three copies of your data (production site + 2 backups), on two different media types (local server + cloud storage), with one offsite (cloud). This applies whether you’re backing up database, files, or full site.
Test Restores Regularly: Backups you’ve never restored are just hopes, not guarantees. Quarterly, restore a backup to staging environment and verify everything works. Test database-only restore, file-only restore, and full restore.
Match Frequency to Change Rate: Content-heavy sites need frequent database backups. Sites with frequent plugin/theme changes need frequent file backups. All sites need regular full backups. Your backup schedule should reflect your site’s change patterns.
Don’t Forget wp-config.php: Database backups don’t capture wp-config.php which contains database connection credentials. Losing this file means you can’t connect your restored database to WordPress. Always include it in file or full backups.
Consider Retention Policies: Keep more frequent recent backups (last 7 daily), fewer older backups (4 weekly), and sparse archive backups (12 monthly). This balances protection with storage costs. Database backups are cheap to keep longer; full backups expensive.
Automate Everything: Manual backups fail because humans forget. Set up automatic scheduled backups: hourly database, daily full, weekly cloud sync. Automation ensures consistent protection without relying on memory.
Label Backups Clearly: Name backups descriptively: “2025-01-24-02-00-full-backup.zip” tells you exactly when and what type. “Before-plugin-update-2025-01-24.zip” explains why it exists. Future you will appreciate clear naming.
Monitor Backup Success: Backups should email you on success and failure. Review backup logs weekly. Verify recent backups exist and are complete. Automated systems fail silently without monitoring—don’t discover broken backups when you desperately need them.
Relevant External Links
- WordPress Database Schema
- WordPress File Structure Overview
- What Data Does WordPress Store in the Database
Call to Action
Want smarter backups? Backup Copilot Pro lets you create selective backups with custom options. Backup exactly what you need, when you need it!