I just want to make sure that if something were to go wrong with my site that I would have everything on my computer to restore it. I was using a Wordpress backup plugin but was wondering if doing a full .tar.gz backup in cPanel is possibly better? P.S. Does this cost my host anything, would they mind me generating and downloading these often? Thanks.
A full cPanel backup of every file and the entire database will almost always be more complete than a backup run through WP, because... well, because the latter is run through WP and only backs up the CMS content! If you have cPanel access (for which you're probably paying), there is no financial reason to avoid backing up as often as you wish. The only thing it costs is a bit of CPU time, space and bandwidth - unless your ISP's T&C specifically state otherwise, that's what you're paying them for. Personally, I use the Updraft plugin for WP backups, because it allows you to choose a DB, file or full backup. I run a DB backup every day and a file backup every week, so everything gets saved. It also links to Dropbox, so it doesn't use up my hosting space, and deletes old backups automatically. And it's free. I can rebuild everything from those backups.