How to Back Up a WordPress Theme

How to Back Up a WordPress Theme

Last modified: May 6, 2022

FAQ
Cloudways

Backing up a WordPress website is really important when it comes to securing your website. There are numerous problems that can happen with a website. A slight glitch on a server, a rogue hosting company, a hacker or an accident you make while making a change can render your website completely useless. Therefore, it is useful to know how to back up a WordPress theme.

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Why Back Up Just 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.

When to Back Up Your WordPress Theme

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.

How to Backup a WordPress Theme

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.

Step 1: Download

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

Step 2: WordPress Theme

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’.

Step 3: Login

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.

Step 4: Themes Folder

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.

Step 5: Download

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

Final Word: How to Back Up a WordPress Theme

Above is how to back up a WordPress theme with ease. It takes just a few seconds to do and should a mistake happen, all you need to do is reload the backup to the theme folder to undo the changes. And there are also plugins that can help you complete this task as well, like ths one.

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