How to Back Up a WordPress Theme

There are some who will question the value of backing up just the WordPress theme. However, there are numerous reasons why backing up the WordPress theme might be a better idea. For one, if you’re making changes to just the theme, then backing up the rest of the website is a waste of time.

WordPress is a huge piece of software and it takes a long time to manually backup. When manually backing up your website, it can sometimes block your computer. Therefore, by backing up your theme, you can save where changes are going to be affected without taking up too much time.

There are several times when you might want to back up the theme. The first is when you’re making big customizations for your website. This is a big one because you don’t want to lose good work on your theme done before which might be lost if the theme becomes corrupted.

Another time is when there is an update on the theme or the WordPress website and you might lose some customizations.

Finally, you might want to back up your WordPress theme regularly to protect from damage caused by hackers.

To back up a WordPress theme there are several options. One of these is to use a plugin that can do the process for you. But this can be expensive and sometimes it is very annoying. Another option is to have an FTP account option.

Your hosting partner should be able to give you access to your FTP account and then you just need to download an FTP client. FileZilla is a highly recommended FTP client, however, there are others like FireFTP, gFTP and others.

FileZilla is simple to use and free.

The first step is to download your FTP client from their official website.

Now check which theme is currently activated on your WordPress website. Remember that changes will only be made to an active theme when you’re adding custom CSS. You can find this out by entering the WordPress dashboard, clicking on Appearance and then ‘Theme’.

Now log into your website’s FTP files through FileZilla using the credentials. You might need to double-check them with your hosting provider. This should be easily done and normally within the hosting dashboard, there are the credentials for you.

Now head into the WP content folder and find the theme’s folder. Look for the theme that you’re currently using within the folder. It should be rather simple to find.

Now download that file and save it onto your desktop or other local drives.