Backup and Security Best Practices

Your Benecaster site holds things that are expensive to lose: subscriber records, feed tokens, episode files, and billing history. None of this is Benecaster-specific — it’s ordinary WordPress operational hygiene — but it matters more here because a podcast with paying subscribers has real people and real money attached to what’s in your database.

This page is general practice, not a Benecaster feature reference. Updating Benecaster Safely covers the update-specific workflow; this page covers the standing habits worth having in place regardless of whether you’re updating anything.

Backups

The 3-2-1 pattern

Three copies of your data, on two different types of storage, with one copy offsite. In practice for a WordPress site that means:

The live site itself (one copy).
A local or host-provided backup (a second copy, different location from the live site).
An offsite copy — cloud storage, a different provider than your host — so a problem with your hosting account doesn’t take out every copy at once.

UpdraftPlus (free) and most alternatives can push backups to Dropbox, Google Drive, or S3-compatible storage on a schedule, which covers the offsite leg without extra cost. See Updating Benecaster Safely → Step 1 for what to include.

Test your restores

A backup you have never restored is a hope, not a plan. Periodically restore a backup to a staging copy — see Testing with a Staging Site — and confirm the site comes back up, your database migrated cleanly, and subscriber data looks intact. Finding out a backup is corrupt during an actual emergency is the worst possible time to find out.

Benecaster’s own Back up Benecaster data file (Settings → Tools) imports with mysql or phpMyAdmin. It keeps existing WordPress accounts as they are and restores deleted ones.

Keep backups and exports outside the web root

If your host gives you a writable folder outside the web root, name it in wp-config.php:

define( 'BENECASTER_PRIVATE_DIR', '/path/outside/web/root' );

Benecaster creates its own benecaster/ folder inside it for new backups and exports, and uninstall deletes only that folder. Files already in wp-content/uploads/benecaster/ stay listed, and you can still download or delete them. Most hosts offer no such folder; where none exists, leave the constant unset and the files stay in uploads with unguessable names.

Know your host’s retention window

Many managed hosts keep a rolling window of daily backups (7, 14, or 30 days is typical) and delete older ones automatically. If you need to recover something from further back than that, your own offsite copies are the only thing that will still be there.

Keep a few recent backups and at least one older one. Several daily backups cover the usual accident, but a problem you find late (a compromise, or a plugin that has been quietly damaging data) may already be in every recent copy. A weekly or monthly backup kept for longer gives you a point from before it started.

Keeping the Software Current

An outdated WordPress core, theme, or plugin is the single most common way a site gets compromised — most attacks target known vulnerabilities in old versions, not zero-days. Updating Benecaster Safely covers the safe way to apply updates; the point here is simply that deferring updates indefinitely because “it’s working” trades a small, controlled risk today for a larger, uncontrolled one later.

A Web Application Firewall (WAF)

A WAF filters malicious requests — SQL injection attempts, brute-force login floods, known exploit patterns — before they reach WordPress at all. Two common ways to get one:

A host-level or CDN firewall. Cloudflare’s free tier, and many managed WordPress hosts, filter traffic before it reaches your server. If your host already offers this, it’s usually the lowest-effort option.
A WordPress security plugin. Wordfence and Sucuri Security (both free, with paid tiers) add firewall rules, malware scanning, and login-attempt monitoring at the plugin level.

Either is better than neither. Check whether your host already provides one before adding a second — running two firewalls rarely causes problems, but it’s redundant effort to configure both.

Strong, unique passwords for every admin account. A password manager makes this easy to actually do.
Two-factor authentication (2FA) on every account with admin or editor access. Most security plugins above include it, or use a dedicated plugin like WP 2FA.
Limit login attempts. Slows down brute-force attacks against your login page. Included in most security plugins.
Remove unused admin accounts, especially ones left over from a developer or agency engagement that has ended.
Turn off XML-RPC unless something you use needs it (some mobile apps and older publishing tools do). It is a common target for password-guessing attacks. Most security plugins have a switch for it. Benecaster does not use it.
Stop listing your users to strangers. WordPress’s REST API answers yoursite.com/wp-json/wp/v2/users with the usernames of everyone who has published, which hands an attacker half of each login. Security plugins can hide it from visitors who are not signed in. Benecaster does not use that endpoint.

Protecting the Email You Send

Benecaster sends your subscribers a lot of email from your domain: feed links, receipts, renewal reminders. Without the right DNS records, anyone can send mail that claims to come from that domain, and a phishing email that looks like your renewal reminder is aimed squarely at your subscribers.

Three records stop that: SPF (which servers may send for your domain), DKIM (a signature proving a message wasn’t altered) and DMARC (what a receiving server should do with mail that fails the other two). Your email service gives you the exact values; add them at your domain registrar or DNS host. They help your real mail reach inboxes too. See SMTP Setup and Why a New Domain Should Send Email Slowly.

Monitoring

You want to find out about a problem before a subscriber does. Two low-effort options:

Uptime monitoring — a free service like UptimeRobot pings your site every few minutes and alerts you if it goes down.
Malware/file-change scanning — the security plugins mentioned above typically include this, alerting you if core files are modified unexpectedly.

If You Think You’ve Been Compromised

Take the site offline (maintenance mode or take it down entirely) before doing anything else, so an attacker can’t cause further damage while you investigate. Restore from a backup taken before the compromise began — not the most recent one, if the most recent one might already include the attacker’s changes. Change every password and rotate every key (Stripe, SMTP, any API keys in wp-config.php) after restoring, since a compromised site may have exposed them. If you’re not confident doing this yourself, most hosts and security plugin vendors offer a paid cleanup service.

If you think someone may also have access to your benecaster.com account, for example because you received an email about changing its address that you didn’t ask for, see If You Didn’t Ask for the Change.

Name	Set by	What it does	Kept for
`wordpress_logged_in_*`	Benecaster	Keeps you signed in to your Benecaster account.	Until you sign out, or two weeks with "Remember Me".
`wordpress_sec_*`	Benecaster	Secures your signed-in session over HTTPS.	Until you sign out, or two weeks with "Remember Me".
`wp-settings-*`	Benecaster	Remembers your admin screen preferences.	One year.
`benecaster_ls_purchase_sign_in`	Benecaster	Signs you in to your new account on the page you bought from, once your purchase has gone through.	Thirty minutes, or until you are signed in.
`benecaster_ls_cookie_consent`	Benecaster	Remembers the choice you make on this banner, so we do not ask again.	One year.

Name	Set by	What it does	Kept for
`__stripe_mid`	Stripe	Lets Stripe recognise the device across payment attempts to detect card fraud.	One year.
`__stripe_sid`	Stripe	The same fraud check, for the current visit only.	Thirty minutes.