Backups

When your WordPress site is hosted at Seravo, automatic backups are included in all plans. Backups are made every night, and the retention period of each backup is 30 days. Backups can be accessed by customers on the server, in the  /data/backups directory. The current status of the site backups can be inspected with the command wp-backup-status. You can also inspect the backups by logging in to your WordPress site, in the Seravo Plugin's menu Tools > Backups. Are you looking for instructions for how to restore your site from a backup? See instructions in a separate article.

Automatic backups at Seravo

Backups include all files under the /data/wordpress directory and the site's database, so that the entire WordPress site is backed up. For example, the files under the /tmp directory are deleted at regular intervals for security reasons. Read more about the directory structure in Seravo developer docs.

Exclude files or directories from backups

If you want a file or directory not to be backed up, you can add the path to that file or directory to the file  /data/backups/exclude.filelist which uses the rdiff-backup syntax, i.e. one path per line.

Offsite backups

In addition to automatic backups, Seravo's hosting service also includes offsite backups. The customers' backups are also located in a completely separate, secure location. This way, the site data is preserved even in the event of a disruption in the data center.

Staging environments (shadows) excluded from backups

At Seravo, only production environments (live sites) are included in the automatic backups. Staging environments used in site development are not backed up automatically. We take automatic backups on production sites, but there are no automatic backups of staging environments. If you have a staging environment, please make sure that you save the site's history in version control (e.g. Git) or take a manual backup (wp-backup) before making changes. Read more about staging environments at Seravo.

Manual backups

Even though your site is backed up automatically, you can also make additional manual backups yourself.

Manual backups with Seravo Plugin

You can make a manual backup of your site directly in the WordPress dashboard, in the Seravo Plugin menu Tools > Backups and clicking the "Create a backup" button

Manual backup with command line

The backup can also be taken manually by running the wp-backup command on the server over SSH connection. You can also backup only the site database with the wp db export command.

Manual backup with a plugin

If necessary, you can also make a downloadable copy of your site for example with the All-in-One WP Migration plugin. See here for more detailed instructions.

We do not recommend installing additional backup plugins for your WordPress site, as backups are already automatically included in all our hosting plans. See here to find out which plugins we do not recommend using in our service. Additional backup solutions on the site needlessly consume the disk space in the plan, while the backups made by Seravo are excluded from the disk space calculations. Furthermore, the site owner is responsible of the management of their own backups as well as deleting them if a site user requests their data to be deleted according to the GDPR. Less plugins also means less chances to the site to break and a smaller attack-vector for malicious parties.

Custom backup solution

If needed, you can build a custom solution that extracts the backups made by Seravo to your own external server. This can be done for example by using SSH or SFTP connection.