Having backups of your site is essential. Every webmaster should have a few backups of his/hers website in case something goes wrong.
There are dozens of backup plugins available in the WordPress plugin repository. This section explains the manual process of backing up your WordPress website.
Backup WordPress Manually
WordPress is a web application based on PHP and MySQL. As such you need to backup all its files and its database to have a full copy of your site. The easiest way to copy your files is via FTP. To do this follow the outline in our FTP section. Make sure that you save all the files and folders in the directory WordPress is installed in (public_html if it’s the main application for your account).
The WordPress database can be backed up as any other database. Simply follow the outline in the MySQL backup databases section. In case you have multiple MySQL databases and you wonder which one your site is using, open the wp-config.php file in the WordPress root folder and you’ll see the database name saved next to the DB_NAME option.