WordPress How To: Do the Mother of All Backups
Backing up is one of those things that many folks think about when it is too late and you wish you had the backup you never made. Usually when you are in the situation of wishing you had backed up, you are then motivated to get a system in place so you never have to feel that pain again. So let’s take care of that today and help you to avoid being one of the “I wish I had…” crowd.
When you have a WordPress site, backing up is not only more important because you have a database driven site, it is actually even easier due to WordPress plugins and it’s structure.
- First get the WP-DBManager plugin. You can set this puppy to backup once a week to your server and if your database isn’t too large you can have a copy of the backup e-mailed to you. But even if you automate this process, make a point of downloading a copy of that backup off your server and onto your local computer or external hard drive. If your host has issues, what good is having your backup stored there? Same for your computer. If you have your backup on your hard drive and it crashes — oh-oh! That’s why it is a good idea to have copies of your site’s backup files in more than one location.
- I backup my computer every day with Carbonite. For $55/year, Carbonite automatically backs up the files on my main computer — including by WordPress site files. Now I have redundancy which is a good thing. The chances that HostGator, my harddrive and Carbonite are all going to crash and lose my files is practically impossible — and let’s face it, if that were to happen something tells me we would all have more important things to be worrying about!
- Through you Web hosting control panel’s File Manager or by using the FTP software of your choice, download the “wp-content” folder off your server. This folder is the heart of your WordPress site.
- Just to be safe, in your root directory which is usually html or public_html, download a copy of your .htaccess and wp-config.php files too.
- Last but certainly not least, when in your WordPress Dashboard, go to Tools > Export and download your WordPress XML file that contains your content, posts and pages.
How often you go through the above 5 steps depends on how often you add content to your site. The more often you add content the more often it would behoove you to backup. Get the above in place and if you ever have to go through the grief of having to restore your site, you’ll be glad you did!
At your service,
Your WordPress Consultant
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I don’t have a blog yet but you almost have me convinced to convert my business site to WordPress. I tried GoDaddy’s self installing WP on my hosting account and am playing with a free template. Just got to tweak it and figure it all out.
I use Sugar Sync for my automatic backups PLUS it syncs my data across all 4 of my computers plus my assistants.
One thing though is they don’t do yet is Outlooks .pst files, so for now I use Data Deposit Box.
Though it does real-time uploads, backs up external hard drives and allows you to access all your data via a browser from any computer.
I guess I’ve become a evangelist, it’s saved my butt several times…
If you try it out, would you use my referral link?
https://www.sugarsync.com/referral?rf=bb9o60wcvr5d3
Karissa :)
Hey, Karissa:
Thanks for stopping by and for the tips! One thing I can tell you is GoDaddy makes WordPress more difficult that it has to be. When I run into a client on that platform I get them off of if at all possible to save time, expense and unnecessary headaches.
If you are serious about going WordPress, you’ll want to be on a WordPress host (GoDaddy is just a host that offers WordPress) — big difference! I use HostGator for my own 20+ WordPress sites and highly recommend them to clients too.
HTH!