I have certainly had my pain when I didn't backup WordPress website files
. My first incident was when I thought I could be a PHP programmer. While tweaking the template to a point I liked it I thought I could get fancy with ad sharing and rotating ads. I broke my site and could not fix it. Since I never backed up my site I had to reload the template and start over. That was the least of my issues.
Later, I thought that the wordpress updates were optional and a big pain. Eventually one of those security holes got through and filled my website with links to various adult sites. Since I never backed up the database I ended up calling the website hosting company and asking for a backup. It took a few weeks to get it so all wasn't lost, but it was very stressful.
You don't have to depend on your hosting company to do the work for you. You can create a backup anytime you want to. I recommend every few months or before you are going to do any experimenting.
The basic steps to backup your website is to:
Use a FTP program like filezilla, login to your site like loading into your cPanel. Then copy all the files related to your site to your computer. Just replace the folders everytime you repeat the copy.
To Backup the WordPress database:
Log into cPanel
Click phpadmin
Choose the database that holds your wordpress files
Click the Export Tab
Click Add/Drop Table
Check Complete Inserts
Check Save as File Box
Check none for compression unless your database is huge
Click the GO button
It is important to backup wordpress website files so when something goes wrong you won't get so frustrated with your site that you quit. If you find these processes to be too cumbersome you can find some plugins that will manage your backups for you. However, plugins that are copying or recreating whole tables always scare me. I just picture a whole table vanishing on me.