Outdated themes, plugins, and WordPress version are the number one way hackers gain access to your site (besides brute force hacks of your login). Even deactivated themes and plugins can leave your system vulnerable. but precautions are the best practices for keeping your site up to date.
Taking a backup is especially required when you migrate from one theme to another or from one update to another, but a backup should always be there.
If a core, plugin or theme is not compatible; post update, the chances of a broken site increase or it will chance to lose valuable data . As such, it is always best to always take a database backup before updating.
You could choose to take your backups manually. However, this is not best practice as it is all too easy to simply forget to take regular backups or to mistakenly skip a step in the process. Instead we recommend making your database backups automatic, so you are always up to date. When trying to update something on your site like a plugin or the WordPress core, you should first take a database backup on your WordPress site before executing the update.
To Enable/disable Setting Go to Dashboard=>Tool=>WP-DB Backup => Settings => Enable Auto Backups Before Upgrade
If checked then it will create database backup on(before) upgrade/update plugin, theme, WordPress.
Leave blank/Un-checked for disable this feature.
Select the plugin/theme that you wish to update. For this example, we will update the WP User plugin.
After you hit the ‘update now’ link, it will create Database Backup and after Database Backup it will update WP User Plugin.
In the Database Backup List(Dashboard=>Tool=>WP-DB Backup), you will now see this new database backup listed under the ‘Existing Backups’ list.
