How to Manually Backup Your WordPress Website
1. Backup Website Contents
Step 1: Login to the Control Panel (cPanel, Plesk, or another hosting panel) of your website.
Step 2: Open the File Manager.
Step 3: Navigate to your website’s root directory (usually in the public_html folder for cPanel users).
Step 4: Select all website files, including the WordPress folders such as wp-content, wp-admin, wp-includes, and other custom files.
Step 5: Compress (create a zip file of) all selected contents.
Step 6: Download the compressed file to your local machine for safekeeping.
2. Backup WordPress Database
Step 1: Login to the Control Panel (cPanel, Plesk, etc.) of your website.
Step 2: Open phpMyAdmin (found under the Databases section in cPanel).
Step 3: Select your WordPress database from the left-hand panel (the database name often starts with wp_ by default).
Step 4: Click on the Export tab at the top.
Step 5: Select the Quick export method and ensure the format is set to SQL.
Step 6: Click on the Go button to download the database backup to your local system.
Your backup is now complete. Keep both the website contents and the database file in a safe location, ideally offsite, to ensure you can restore your website if needed.