How To Take An Independent Softaculous Backup Of your WordPress Site

At this point, we already have quite a few backup tutorials on NameHero. We’ve talked about backing up the database, backing up the file system, as well as our policy of free nightly backups that we keep for one day.

However, the above techniques are not WordPress specific. They backup databases and files that are applicable to any software package. Neither are they “one-click” and restore. There are plugins you can use to backup WordPress from within, but I prefer to do it from the server directly on cPanel. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to use Softaculous to take backups of WordPress that you can then download on to your local machine.

The benefit of this method is extreme simplicity. Softaculous backups can be made in under a minute, and restored just as easily with a single click. Since this is a WordPress specific backup, you won’t need to make any configuration changes, which is super convenient.

1. Go to the Softaculous WordPress Section

Open your hosting cPanel dashboard, and search for Softaculous on NameHero like this:

Once inside, you’ll get an overview of all the apps you can have on your account, as well as a count of the number of backups you’re allowed to maintain using Softaculous. In the screenshot below, this number is 2:

Right now, there are currently 0 backups. Click “WordPress” as shown above.

Take the Backup

In the WordPress section, scroll down till you see the section “Current Installations”. Here you see all the WordPress installations you have so far:

There are a number of icons here allowing you to take various actions like creating a staging area, clone it, or take a backup. The backup icon looks like a folder with a green arrow pointing back at it as shown above. Click that, and you’ll be asked to confirm you backup details in the next screen:

Here, you’ll also be given the option to change your backup location and create a backup note – I usually just use the current date. Make sure the details are correct, such as the WordPress URL and start the backup by clicking the big blue button as shown above.

This will initiate the backup process as shown here:

Depending on the size of your installation, it might take a few minutes.

3. Download the Backup

Once the installation is complete, you can click the link in the box above to go to the backups page. If you’ve moved to another page, you can navigate to the backups page by clicking the backup icon at the top right of the Softaculous page.

This will give you a list of all the backups you have so far – both manual as well as automatic. From here, you can download, restore, or delete them. Simply click the arrow next to the one you want, to initiate the download onto your local machine.

Benefits of the Softaculous Backup

To me, the biggest benefit of the Softaculous WordPress backup is the ease of use. You don’t need to backup the database and files separately. That means all your themes, child themes, plugins and customizations get backed up at the same time. It’s all done for you in the same package. When you restore it, you can have everything done at once. There’s no danger of a mismatch between the various WordPress components.

If like me, you prefer to have a “no-hassle” approach to backups and also like to have a local copy that you can keep with you, the Softaculous backup procedure is the simplest, and the best!