Not backing up your WordPress database regularly can lead to significant consequences:
- Loss of Previous Work: Without regular backups, you only have your memory to rely on in case something happens to your website and you’re forced to rebuild it. Any hours of work you’ve already invested in go down the drain.
- Revenue and Customer Loss due to Downtime: If your website is down, you can’t sell products like you normally do. This disruption could last anywhere from a few hours to a few days. Every new website visitor is a potential repeat customer. But when your store isn’t functioning properly, you are giving first-time visitors a negative impression of your brand. Even your most loyal customers will be left with a bad impression.
- Cost in Time and Money to Recover: When your website is down, the number one goal for your entire team will be to recover within less than 24 hours. Without complete backups, it might not be possible to recover in a short period of time. For instance, imagine the frustration and time required to manually rebuild all of your product pages from scratch.
- Accidental Deletions: If you update your site frequently and the last backup you have is from weeks, or even months ago, it can mean a lot of lost data and content. Creating backups regularly helps minimize the risk of losing all your hard work or having to start from scratch.
- Cyber Attacks: A recent study revealed that 50 percent of small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) surveyed had experienced a website breach. Twenty percent of those occurred within the last year. Hackers and third-party vulnerabilities introduced by outdated plugins and themes aren’t the only risks you face. There’s also the possibility of accidentally breaking your site while editing your code and files. In other words, there’s a lot that can go wrong with your site. While this is never a fun situation to deal with, it becomes a lot less stressful if you know you have a recently saved version of your site you can roll back 2.
Therefore, it’s crucial to back up your WordPress database regularly to avoid these potential issues.
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