Description
Most WordPress backup tools either feel too fragile when you actually need them, or too bloated with upsells and clutter. WXD Backup Lite is built around a narrower goal: reliable backups, safer restores, and cleaner migrations for real-world WordPress sites.
The focus is on recovery confidence and predictable workflows — not features for their own sake.
Full-site backups. Guided restores. Clean migrations.
WXD Backup Lite can create full-site or selective backups, schedule recurring jobs, enforce retention rules, lock important backups from deletion, and guide restores through a structured flow — including an automatic restore point created before every recovery attempt.
WooCommerce-friendly: Because WooCommerce stores everything in the WordPress database and filesystem, full-site backups automatically capture orders, products, customers, and store configuration. No extra setup required.
What’s included:
- Full-site backup — database, plugins, themes, uploads, MU-plugins, and core files
- Selective backup scope for targeted jobs
- Portable .zip backup archives
- Daily, weekly, or manual backup scheduling
- Configurable retention with automatic cleanup of the oldest backups
- Backup locking to protect important archives from auto-deletion
- Guided one-click restore with scope selection, confirmation, and real-time progress
- Automatic restore point created before every restore
- Real-time restore event log and progress tracking
- Post-restore validation flow
- Site migration workflow with URL rewriting
- wp-config.php normalization after migration
- Import from an uploaded backup archive
- Dashboard with backup stats, storage forecast, and server health check
- Activity log with export support
- Concurrent restore lock and restore-safety protections
- Nonce and capability protection on all AJAX actions
Note: This plugin does not support WordPress Multisite. It is designed for single-site installs only.
Privacy: No data leaves your server. WXD Backup Lite makes no external API calls, does not phone home, and requires no account or license key. Backup archives are stored locally in the wsbl-backups subfolder of your WordPress uploads directory.
Installation
- Upload the plugin folder to
/wp-content/plugins/or install directly from the WordPress plugin directory. - Activate the plugin through the WordPress admin.
- Go to WXD Backup in the WordPress admin sidebar.
- Create your first backup, or configure a schedule and retention policy.
No account, no API key, no external service required.
FAQ
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Where are backups stored?
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Locally on your server in a protected
wsbl-backupssubfolder inside your WordPress uploads directory. The exact path depends on yourwp-content/uploadsconfiguration. Remote storage destinations (S3, Backblaze) are planned for the Pro tier. -
What does each backup contain?
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Each archive contains a SQL database dump, a JSON manifest file, key root config files when present, and the main WordPress content directories (plugins, themes, uploads, and optionally core files).
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Does this plugin support restore?
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Yes. You can restore a full backup or selectively restore supported backup components from the admin area. Every restore creates an automatic restore point first, so you can roll back immediately if something goes wrong.
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Does this plugin support migration?
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Yes. You can upload an archive, import it into local storage, and restore it. The migration workflow handles URL rewriting and wp-config.php normalization so the site comes up cleanly on the new host.
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Does it work with WooCommerce?
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Yes. Full-site backups capture WooCommerce orders, products, customers, and store configuration automatically — no separate plugin or configuration needed.
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Does it work with WordPress Multisite?
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No. This version does not support Multisite. Activating on a Multisite network will show an admin notice and the plugin will remain inactive. Multisite support is on the roadmap for a future release.
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What happens if a restore fails halfway?
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Every restore creates an automatic restore point first, and concurrent restores are blocked. If something fails mid-restore, you can immediately roll back to the pre-restore state.
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Does it require any special PHP extension?
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Yes. The PHP
ZipArchiveextension must be enabled on your server. The plugin’s health check will flag this if it is missing. -
Does this plugin send data to external services?
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No. WXD Backup Lite operates entirely on your server and does not connect to any external service.
Reviews
There are no reviews for this plugin.
Contributors & Developers
“WXD Backup Lite” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
Contributors
Translate “WXD Backup Lite” into your language.
Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
Changelog
1.0.2
- Fixed: the backup lock/unlock icon was blank on the initial Backups table render and only appeared after the button was clicked. The SVG icon now renders correctly on first paint.
- Fixed: corrected several admin-area links (Upgrade to Pro, Docs, Support, More Products) that pointed to non-existent URLs.
1.0.1
- Restore reliability: post-commit hardening (.htaccess + wp-config) now runs in the same request that commits files, so cPanel/LiteSpeed handler directives baked into a backup .htaccess can no longer 500 the site mid-restore.
- Restore reliability: stale source-site jobs purged from the imported activity log; the completed restore is recorded as its own activity entry.
- Restore reliability: iThemes Security
itsec-*options purged on restore, preventing Force-SSL redirect loops on the destination. - Stop restore: clicking Stop early no longer leaves the modal hanging; the rollback now drives incrementally via the JS poll loop so the event log streams transitions instead of going silent.
- Stop restore: progress bar no longer snaps from 100% back to 0% after a successful rollback.
- Stop restore: starting a new restore from a wizard that still shows a previous “Stopped” terminal state now resets cleanly.
- Stop restore: event log no longer leaks a stale “Importing general database tables” entry below the “Stop requested by user” line.
- Rollback throughput: DB import bumped to 5,000 statements per tick during rollback, turning multi-hour rollbacks into minutes.
- Migrate wizard: removed the URL-mapping step (auto-detected from archive) and the PRO upsell placeholder.
- Migrate wizard: Stop Restore button moved into the wizard footer and now hides on terminal completion.
- Migrate wizard: progress bar now fills determinately during the restore phase.
- Migrate wizard: event log now matches the standalone Restore wizard density.
- Activity log: drag-and-drop file selection now enables the wizard’s Next button (parity with Browse).
- Activity log: per-tick byte/percent sub-progress shown during long DB import buckets.
- Activity log: stopped+rolled-back restores now render with an amber “Stopped — rolled back” badge.
- Activity log: event log populates from both the standalone restore wizard and the migrate wizard’s poll loop.
- Activity log: Retry Job for restore-type jobs now opens the regular Restore wizard instead of running silently in the background.
- Critical: fixed a rollback-empties-plugin-dir bug where a failed copy() during file-rollback would call cleanup_path() on the destination without a preserved fallback, deleting wp-content/plugins entirely.
- Localhost compatibility: optional shim for the WpOrg\Requests\IdnaEncoder autoloader works around a known Elementor + localhost subdirectory crash.
- Code quality: WordPress.org Plugin Check passes with zero errors and zero warnings.
1.0.0
- Initial release of WXD Backup Lite.
- Full-site and component-level WordPress backups with SQL database export.
- Restore workflow with automatic safety restore point and rollback on failure.
- Import and migration workflow with URL mapping and environment-aware hardening.
- Scheduled backups, retention policy, background job tracking, and archive verification.