Backing up your website on a regular basis is crucial for making sure that the hard work you put into your site is preserved.

Sometimes, unforeseeable events can bring down a site or cause it to lose data. Whether it's a malicious hacking attempt, an incompatible third-party plugin update, or accidental deletions caused by human error, few websites are immune to harm.

With real-time backups in place, however, none of these scenarios can damage your site in the long term. Backups allow you to quickly restore your website in the event that something goes wrong.

While daily, scheduled backups are a great practice, they aren't always enough. If you want your website to be truly safe, you need a real-time backup plan.

Let's explore how backups work, and the difference between scheduled and real-time backups. We'll also review some exciting new Jetpack updates that will keep your site more secure than ever.

The mechanics of making backups

Before you get started, it's important to understand the basics of how backups work.

For certain backup services, an update in the database creates a new "event." This event then notifies the plugin you're using for backups that a change was made. However, some external services don't monitor your site for changes, and only run backups at specific times of the day.

Every time you make a change to your site, WordPress stores the information in its database. Those changes might include adding a new post, updating a post, adding a new page, or receiving new comments.

When you have a scheduled backup, your site will be backed up on a regular interval that you specify. This can be daily, weekly, or monthly. Any event that occurred on your site during the course of that time period will be backed up the next time your scheduled backup runs.

A real-time backup, on the other hand, performs a backup as soon as something significant changes on your site. There's no waiting; instead, every change gets backed up as soon as it occurs.

Scheduled versus real-time backups

For most site owners, real-time backups are the best solution. Even if your site is backed up once every day, there's still a risk of losing important data over the course of 24-hours.

This becomes an even bigger problem if your site sees a lot of daily activity due to high traffic. If you're publishing multiple blog posts in a single day or are receiving a large volume of comments, you can still lose content (even if there isn't much time between scheduled backups).

If you use a real-time backup, on the other hand, every change made to your site will be backed up immediately. Even if the worst happens, with a real-time backup plugin, no data will be lost.

As an added bonus, real-time backups also use fewer resources because they only back up changed files. Scheduled backups, in contrast, back up your entire site from scratch every time a new backup is made.

Previously, Jetpack's backups allowed you to set a scheduled backup interval. Now, your site will be continuously backed up in real-time with no added effort on your part.

Real-time backups are available with all of Jetpack's paid plans, so now is a great time to consider upgrading.

Get going with real-time backups

Backing up your site should be at the top of your to-do list. Without backups, you leave your site vulnerable and risk losing the work you put into it.

If you already have automatic backups in place, then you're doing a great job of keeping your website secure!

If you want to take your site security to the next level by ensuring that even the smallest change is saved, take a look at the real-time backups offered as part of Jetpack.