Laravel Virtual Wallet

A lightweight, plug-and-play Laravel package for managing virtual wallets.

The post Laravel Virtual Wallet appeared first on Laravel News.

Join the Laravel Newsletter to get all the latest Laravel articles like this directly in your inbox.

Read more https://laravel-news.com/laravel-virtual-wallet?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=feedpress.me&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+laravelnews

Details

Category: Dev News

How to Back Up Your WordPress Site So You Can Rest Easy

Keeping your WordPress site backed up is essential. Imagine how you’d feel if your website was gone one day and there was no way to get it back.

While there are many ways to back up your WordPress site, choosing the right one can be difficult. Each option has its own features and user experience. 

This guide covers the important features to look for in a backup tool. It also looks at some of the best backup tools available and includes a quick walkthrough of how to back up a WordPress site. 

What are WordPress backups?

 A WordPress backup is a copy of your website’s files and database. The backup lets you restore the whole site if something goes wrong. There are two types of backups:

• A full backup restores the entire site to the state it was in when the backup file was created.
• An incremental backup only restores new or recently modified items, such as updated pages, new plugin settings, or altered media files.

While the WordPress editor autosaves your posts and pages, giving you a way to restore earlier versions of your content, this isn’t the same as backing up an entire WordPress site, including its files and database.

• A database backup includes your site’s content, such as all posts and pages, the site settings, user information, and comments.
• A file backup typically includes the themes, plugins, media uploads, and core WordPress files of your site.
• A partial backup only includes some files or parts of the database and its tables.

Partial backups

If you want to restore the site’s content, without overwriting any changes you’ve made to the site’s files since the backup was created, you can make a partial backup.

For example, maybe you want to restore a deleted blog post, but you’ve changed your site’s theme since the post was deleted. Restoring just the database will restore the post (and other database contents) without affecting the site’s files.

Manual vs. automatic backups

Backups can be created manually or automatically, depending on the features of your backup tool.

Basic WordPress backup solutions often don’t back up your site in real time, necessitating a manual backup prior to changing your site. While a manual backup offers more control, the downsides include:

• Not always knowing when to make a backup
• Having to remember when you should make a backup
• Role-based restrictions on who can make the backup

Automatic backups happen on a regular schedule, such as once per day, or as changes are made to your site. Due to the importance of having a recent backup, it’s a good idea to choose a solution that automatically creates backups. 

Why WordPress backups are important

Reasons you might need to use a backup to restore your site include:

• Hacking or malware: Although WordPress is a secure platform, a clean backup allows you to quickly recover your site if it gets hacked or infected.
• Server crashes or hosting failures: If your host loses data or has a server error, a backup can help you get your site online again quickly.
• Accidental data loss or deletion: We all make mistakes, and whether you’ve accidentally edited a blog post, deleted an image file, or changed a key setting, a recent backup lets you undo those changes.
• Plugin or theme conflicts: Installing or updating a plugin or theme may introduce errors to your site or cause a conflict. A backup enables you to return your site to how it was before the issue arose.
• WordPress software updates: New WordPress releases are thoroughly tested, but you might need to roll back to a previous version due to a conflict or introduction of a new feature you’re not ready for.

To mitigate against the above situations, backups must have been recently created, safely stored, and be easy to restore. 

Some websites need more robust backup solutions than others. For example, if you have a site that rarely changes, making a manual backup on a daily or weekly cadence should suffice. 

However, you’ll need a more feature-rich, automatic backup solution if you’re regularly making changes to your site, such as frequently publishing new blog posts, or you often receive comments or messages via your site’s forms. 

Those selling items or subscriptions through their WordPress site will also need robust backup solutions to prevent the loss of orders and other key data.

Additionally, if you have multiple users working on your site, there’s a higher chance of mistakes being made. This means you’ll need to create backups more frequently than once daily.

What to look for in a WordPress backup tool

Your main options as a WordPress site owner are using the backup service provided by your web host or a plugin.

The quality of the available plugins and options provided by hosts vary considerably. Some solutions are very robust, feature-rich, and comprehensive, while others are basic and challenging to use.

Some key points to consider when choosing a way to back up your WordPress site include:

• Automation: Can backups be automatically created on a set schedule, such as daily, or in real-time whenever a change is made?
• Frequency: How often are automatic backups created, and can backups be created manually on demand?
• Breadth: Is your entire site backed up, including the files, database, and email provision? 
• Restoration options: Can you restore part of the backup, such as the database or a specific post, or do you have to restore and overwrite your entire site each time?
• E-commerce-friendly: Is the solution compatible with online stores and does it give you the option of keeping order details while restoring other parts of your store?
• Storage: Are the backups stored separately from your website, such as on another server or in your cloud storage? Can you download the backups to your computer? Are multiple copies of the backup files created for redundancy, and how long are they available?
• Security features: Are the backups encrypted and stored securely?
• Ease of use: How easy is it to access and restore the backups? Is the interface user-friendly?. 

Use your host’s backup solution

Most web hosts provide a backup solution. However, the functionality of the system varies significantly between hosts. Some might have a powerful in-house tool, while others rely on the cPanel backup functionality.

If your host provides a backup solution, try it out and see how easy it is to restore your site. Check its features and how useful they’d be if there’s a problem. If your host’s backup solution isn’t good enough, you should be able to switch to a plugin.

Use a WordPress backup plugin

There are many backup plugins for WordPress. The best options automatically back up your site on a custom schedule or in real time. 

Make sure you closely check out the features and test any plugin you install to see if it works as expected, especially the free options. 

Top WordPress backup plugins

Here’s a quick overview of some popular free and paid plugins you can use to back up your WordPress site:

Jetpack VaultPress Backup

Jetpack VaultPress Backup is a paid service available as a stand-alone WordPress plugin or as part of the WordPress.com Business and Commerce hosting plans, at no extra cost. 

The service includes key backup-related features such as real-time backups, full and partial restoration, and an activity log that makes it easy to undo site changes. 

Jetpack VaultPress Backup has good support for WooCommerce, so you can safely restore your site to any past state while keeping all order and product data.

UpdraftPlus

UpdraftPlus is a very popular plugin available in free and paid options. 

The free version covers all the essentials, including automatically creating backups, saving them to cloud storage, and the ability to easily restore them. However, incremental backups, automatic backup creation before installing WordPress updates, and database encryption are paid features.

Using UpdraftPlus is straightforward, but like most other WordPress backup plugins, it lacks the useful Activity Log feature of Jetpack VaultPress Backup.

BackWPup

BackWPup is another popular plugin with free and paid versions. 

The free version lets you choose exactly what parts of your site to back up. Backups can be automatically created as frequently as every hour. Saving backups to a selection of cloud storage services is another free feature. 

However, restoring backups with the free version isn’t as user-friendly as UpdraftPlus and JetPack VaultPress Backup.

BlogVault WordPress Backup Plugin

The BlogVault WordPress Backup Plugin connects your site to the BlogVault backup service rather than integrating a backup tool into your WordPress dashboard. 

Once set up, all backup and restore actions take place in your account area on the BlogVault website. 

The free version allows you to create backups, but you can only restore them with the relatively expensive paid plans.

Which WordPress backup plugin should you choose?

Out of the above options, the free version of UpdraftPlus is an excellent choice. Frequent automatic backups are included, and you can restore them without upgrading to a paid plan. 

If you’d like a more robust backup solution and don’t mind paying for it, the ease of use and Activity Log feature of Jetpack VaultPress Backup make it an appealing option. 

Whichever one you choose, be sure to thoroughly test the backup and restore functionality now, rather than waiting until it’s needed.

How WordPress.com handles backups

If you host your site with WordPress.com and choose the Business or Commerce plan, you have access to real-time backups powered by Jetpack VaultPress Backup.

Once you’ve signed up for either the Business or Commerce plan, Jetpack VaultPress Backup automatically starts backing up your site in real time. Manually creating a backup at any time is possible, too. 

Backups are available for up to six months while you’re subscribed to an eligible plan. They’re also kept for 30 days after your subscription expires. 

Let’s walk through how to use Jetpack VaultPress Backup with WordPress.com hosting.

Accessing your backups

You can view your backups from your WordPress dashboard. 

Once logged in, go to Jetpack → VaultPress via the sidebar menu.

The last time a backup was created is shown on the Jetpack VaultPress Backup page.

Restoring a WordPress backup

You can restore a backup from your WordPress dashboard or download the file for safekeeping.

You can also view and restore the individual components of the backup, for example if you need to restore an image file that was accidentally deleted.

You can also use the staging site feature available on the Business and Commerce plans to handle more complicated restoration of a backup. 

This is handy if, for instance, you created many blog posts after your last backup, and don’t want to lose those blog posts. You can restore the backup to the staging site, then restore the specific content to the live site.

Although the above is an advanced aspect of Jetpack VaultPress Backup, you never know when you might need it.

Using the Jetpack Activity Log

The Jetpack Activity Log is another way to access your backups. The log displays a detailed list of activities on your site from the past 30 days.

You can undo a change or restore your site to a specific point in the log, if needed.

Jetpack also has a mobile app so you can easily access the Activity Log and restore backups on the go.

As you can see, backing up and restoring your WordPress site can be very straightforward, depending on the tool you choose. 

WordPress site backup best practices

To get the most out of your WordPress site backups, consider the following:

• Frequency: Set a frequency that covers the important changes to your site, such as form submissions, content publication, and customer orders. Even better, opt for real-time backups.
• Storage: Make sure the backups are securely stored and not on the same server as your website. 
• Retention: Ensure enough backups are retained for long enough that you can recover a specific version of your site, rather than only being able to restore to when it was last backed up.
• Test restoring backups: Test your backups occasionally to ensure they are easy to restore when needed. 

If you follow the above advice, you’ll never have to lose sleep over whether or not your WordPress site is backed up sufficiently.

Is your WordPress site backed up?

You don’t want to wait until you need a backup to find out whether or not your site is backed up. 

If your site is being backed up, make sure everything is functioning as expected and that you can successfully restore a backup. If you’re not backing up your site, now is the time to choose a solution.

If you don’t yet have a website, WordPress.com’s managed hosting makes it easy to start one. Depending on your chosen plan, you get access to feature-rich backups, premium themes, and a fast, secure hosting environment. Ready to bring your site home? Start your site migration to WordPress.com here.

Read more https://wordpress.com/blog/2025/06/29/how-to-back-up-wordpress-websites/

Details

Category: Dev News

Web Hosting vs. Website Builder: A Beginner Guide

If you’re thinking about building a website for the first time, you’re likely to run into a question: do you need web hosting or a website builder?

The quick answer: you don’t necessarily have to choose one or the other. Web hosting companies host your site’s files so they are accessible online, while website builders are software services for creating websites. For most new users, the best solution is to choose a hosting company and a website builder.

In this post, we’ll dive into what the terms website hosting and website builder mean in more detail, explain how they work together, and help you choose the best services and options for you based on your skills, budget, and long-term goals.

What is web hosting?

Web hosting is a service that stores your website’s files, such as code, images, and content, on a server. When someone types in your domain name, this server sends the files to their browser, allowing them to view your site.

How web hosting works

Think of web hosting like renting an empty apartment. This server is your space, and you can use it to store your site’s files, images, text, design elements, and more.

You also get full control over how you build your site. You can install a free tool like WordPress or write code using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to create your website. You’re not locked into a single system.

Tip: Different hosting providers offer different types of hosting plans — shared, VPS, cloud, and dedicated. Learn more about each option and explore which one suits your site’s size, budget, and technical needs.

What is a website builder?

A website builder is an all-in-one platform for building, customizing, and hosting a website. You get a drag-and-drop editor, pre-designed themes, technical support, and built-in hosting in a single subscription.

How does a website builder work?

A website builder offers a more user-friendly interface for creating a website. 

Log in to your platform of choice and pick a theme for your site. Then, use the visual editor to design each page with text, images, buttons, custom code, and other features. 

Note: A website builder isn’t the same as a content management system (CMS). A CMS gives you a flexible backend to manage your website’s content, themes, and plugins, but you’re responsible for setup, hosting, updates, and security. In contrast, a website builder manages everything automatically. In short, a CMS offers more control and customization, while a website builder offers more convenience and ease of use.

Common website builders to explore

Here are three platforms to see how a website builder works:

• WordPress.com: Offers managed WordPress hosting and a website builder functionality, all under one roof.
• Squarespace: Design your website with clean templates using built-in tools for blogging, ecommerce, and scheduling.
• Wix: This website builder offers many templates and AI tools to build your site quickly. It’s suitable for small businesses, freelancers, and personal brands for designing websites without coding.

Now that we’ve discussed the basics of website hosting and builders, let’s discuss how they’re similar and where they differ. 

Similarities between website hosting and builders

At first glance, web hosting and website builders seem totally different, but they share a lot of common ground. Before we discuss what sets them apart, let’s look at what both options help you do behind the scenes.

Store and manage all your website files

Your website is made up of many files like text, images, code, a database, and more. All this content has to be stored somewhere.

Website hosting stores these files on a server and gives you direct control over managing them. You can access folders, upload assets, and organize everything the way you want.

Website builders, on the other hand, store these files on their own server. You can’t access or organize them directly, but they’re stored safely and displayed to visitors when they land on your site.

Handle secure domain connections

Your domain name (like example.com) should be linked to the server where your website’s files are stored. You can do this through DNS settings. 

With traditional hosting, you can connect your domain manually by updating DNS records through the registrar. Website builders simplify the process. They often guide you step-by-step or handle it automatically if you purchase the domain through them.

Either way, hosting services and builders ensure your website shows up when someone visits your domain.

Keep your site secure 

Uptime, backups, and updates are critical to your website’s maintenance and security.

Whether you’re using a hosting provider or a website builder, the platform you choose is responsible for keeping your website running smoothly and securely.

Most hosting services offer tools like SSL certificates, regular backups, malware scanning, DDoS protection, and server firewalls. Website builders also offer similar protections, but you don’t need to configure anything manually. 

Web hosting vs. website builder: how are they different

Both of these approaches have a similar end goal — getting your website online, but the way they work is quite different. 

Let’s break down where web hosting and website builders go their separate ways, and what those differences mean for you.

Level of control

Quick answer: Web hosting lets you modify anything, like plugins, code, and more. Website builders limit changes and customizations to what the platform offers.

Web hosting gives you complete control over how your website works behind the scenes. 

You can choose a hosting software like WordPress, set up your website, add plugins or themes, and customize your code. This setup works well for developers and teams looking to build custom features on their sites. 

With web hosting, you can decide on different aspects like speed, security, and how much server power your site gets.

On the other hand, website builders give you a closed environment. 

You can change the design and use the add-ons available on the platform, however, it limits the extent to which you can tweak your site. Basically, you can’t customize the underlying code of your site. 

With this approach, it’s much easier to design a website. However, if you need a feature that the platform doesn’t offer, you can’t add it yourself.

Ease of use

Quick answer: Web hosting can require multiple steps to complete the setup. Website builders provide a quick workflow to get started.

With a hosting service, you need to manage multiple systems manually. You have to:

• Set up your hosting account.
• Install a CMS like WordPress. 
• Back up your site manually. 
• Manage files through FTP. 

This approach requires more technical involvement at every step. It’s more suited for developers who can manage these tasks independently, but it can be frustrating for those who don’t have the necessary technical expertise.

That’s where website builders offer convenience to anyone who doesn’t know the technical side of web development. 

A website builder gives you everything in one place: 

• Themes and templates. 
• Design tools. 
• Security. 
• Hosting. 

It requires a shorter learning curve, and you don’t need to write code.

Speed to launch

Quick answer: It can take more time to launch a website if your web hosting doesn’t include a website builder or CMS. Choosing a hosting option with an included website builder make it easier to design and publish websites.

Launching your site takes many steps when you use a hosting service.

You have to pick a hosting platform, buy a domain, install software, and customize your site. It can take a few days to finish your design, especially if you’re figuring everything out as you go forward. 

In contrast, website builders are made for fast results.

Most builders offer a user-friendly interface and guide you through the process of designing a site. Pick a template, add your copy and images, and publish when you’re ready. For one-pager sites, you can even go live the same day. 

Cost structure

Quick answer: Web hosting alone can look cheap up front, but you pay extra as your website grows. Website builders roll everything into one bill: higher entry price, simpler bookkeeping.

Using a hosting service means you pay separately for different elements — themes, plugins, extra storage, and more. While basic hosting plans seem cheap at first, the total cost can add up once you factor in upgrades or outside help.

Website builders charge a bundled price inclusive of hosting, design tools, support, and security. Choose from tiered plans based on your requirements.

While builders look pricier upfront, they simplify your billing process. Plus, the cost of hosting plans can add up when you factor in upgrades in the long term. 

can be tough because you might have to rebuild your site from scratch.

Make the right choice 

Choosing web hosting is ideal when you:

• Need complete control over your site’s code, plugins, and server settings to work with a custom tech stack.
• Want to create a one-of-a-kind design or special features that off-the-shelf templates can’t deliver.
• Expect to see significant traffic spikes or reach international audiences, and need the flexibility to adjust your site’s bandwidth.
• Have in-house technical expertise to manage updates and troubleshoot issues.

Website builders are ideal when you:

• Want to go live with your site quickly with a minimal setup (for side hustles, portfolios, or small businesses).
• Prefer a simplified billing process with fewer moving parts and everything like hosting, analytics, and CMS in one package.
• Have limited technical knowledge and no time to learn web development and maintenance tasks, 

WordPress.com offers the best of both worlds 

With WordPress.com, you don’t have to worry about choosing one or the other option.

WordPress.com uses the same powerful WordPress engine that powers 40% of all websites globally. This means you get the familiarity, flexibility, and plugin support of open-source WordPress, without too much manual effort.

Here’s what you can do with WordPress.com:

Easy design with block editor and themes

Use the block editor to design pages by simply dragging and dropping elements. Create custom block styles to build visual consistency across your site.

Plus, you can access hundreds of professionally designed themes for multiple industries and use cases. These themes automatically adapt to different screen sizes and don’t require any coding.

Thousands of plugins for added features

Pick tools from the WordPress plugin marketplace to improve your site and expand its functionality. You can add plugins to:

• Improve SEO.
• Create forms.
• Connect to CRM.
• Build a multilingual site.

Fully managed hosting and security

Unlike the self-hosting approach, you don’t need to worry about setting up servers, installing SSL certificates, or handling updates.

WordPress.com takes care of all the maintenance tasks, like site security, uptime monitoring, automatic backups, and performance optimization. You can focus entirely on your website design and business growth.

All WordPress.com websites also come with built-in security features like SSL certificates, domain privacy, spam protection, malware detection, DDoS protection and mitigation, and more.

24/7 support and safe testing tools

WordPress.com offers real human support around the clock on every paid plan. Or get free advice from experts in the active user community.

Plus, you can experiment within your site in staging environments to test changes privately before going live. 

Built to grow with your website

Whether you’re building a small website or have big dreams for the future, WordPress.com grows with your goals. 

You don’t need to switch platforms even if you want to switch your approach from no-code to code. The platform has everything you need to customize and enhance your site. 

Pick the best path forward

Rather than pitting website hosting against website builders, now you know you can have both together (and WordPress.com delivers both with one platform). You get a builder’s ease and a hosting provider’s flexibility without the hassle of migrating your site to a different platform.

Ready to get started? Build and host your site WordPress.com today. 

Read more https://wordpress.com/blog/2025/06/28/web-hosting-vs-website-builder/

Details

Category: Dev News

Analyze Laravel Codebases with the Laravel Introspect Package

With the Laravel Introspect package, you can analyze Laravel codebases, querying views, models, routes, classes, and more directly from your codebase using a type-safe fluent API.

The post Analyze Laravel Codebases with the Laravel Introspect Package appeared first on Laravel News.

Join the Laravel Newsletter to get all the latest Laravel articles like this directly in your inbox.

Read more https://laravel-news.com/laravel-introspect-package?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=feedpress.me&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+laravelnews

Details

Category: Dev News