With the recent attacks on older versions of WordPress (pre 2.8.4) and some bloggers losing months of posts I thought I’d share one of the easiest ways I’ve found to setup a backup process for your WordPress blog. I’m using the WordPress Database Backup plug-in (WP-DB-Backup) and automatically emailing a copy of my files into my Gmail account each day. I send them over to my Gmail account because the amount of storage with Gmail is sufficient and it’s easy to organize them into a separate folder via Gmail’s filters. It’s a very simple way to automatically back up your blog and perhaps some of you are using it, but for those that are not, I highly recommend it. I feel a bit like I’m stating the obvious with this post, but I’m still surprised at how many people are not setting up some sort of process for backing up their blog.
To get started, you’ll want to login to WordPress and download the WordPress Database Backup plug-in.
Next, set up an email forwarder within your hosting account to forward these backups over to Gmail. You can call it backup@yoursite.com . Here’s a screen shot of how I set it up within my hosting account:
Next, login to your Gmail account and click “Create a Filter”:
Enter your domain forwarder in the “To” field and click “Next”:
For options, click the following check boxes as shown below (Skip the inbox, Mark as read, Apply the label, and Never send it to Spam) and select “New Label” from the drop down menu for “Apply the label” and give the filter a name. I named mine “BrandFreeze Backups”.
Finally, click the “Create Filter” button.
Now, over in WordPress click Tools > Backup and you’ll see the various settings for the WP-DB Backup plug-in including the Tables and Plugins you’d like to backup:
Another option on this page allows you to run manual backups and choose where you’d like to send the file:
For our automated backup we’re going to use the “Scheduled Backup” options. You’ll want to enter your email forwarder (backup@yoursite.com) as the “Email backup to:” address. You can then schedule how often you’d like the backup to run and select any tables for your plug-ins that you’d like to backup as well.
Once you have selected your desired settings, click “Schedule Backup” and you’re done.
Now, your blog will run automated backups and send them right into your Gmail account where they are organized via a filter. I have mine scheduled to backup once a day and I view the filter once a week and delete all files from the previous week except for the most recent…just to save space and keep things tidy.
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I LOVE this little plugin and I use it exactly the same way you do. Good stuff. Thanks.
This is a very useful plugin. I’ve been using it for a month or so and it works very well. It’s nice to get the backup e-mailed to you, and it does that all by it self.
I’m new to the blog scene. This tip is great. Thank you for the extremely useful post.
I love the WP-DB Backup plugin. I suggest that, just create a Gmail account specially made for just your blog’s backup which will give you 7GB of space. My average backup file size is around 800kb so, that’s about 8000 unique backups!
I set up Google mail to just delete the backups. Google automatically keeps them for 30 days and then deletes them. No additional work on your part is necessary.
Good point Brent! You can certainly do that as well.
So if you have a crash, how do you restore all the info using that little file that you receive every day? Will you make a post about that?
Hi Murid, thanks for reading! The file created is a standard SQL file and you can read more about how to upload it here:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Restoring_Your_Database_From_Backup
Hope this helps Murid!
Hi Brandon, good article but don’t forget, a full backup is a two step process. You have to:
- backup your database
- backup your hosting files
The two go hand in hand, especially when we’re talking about people attacking your site. Hackers often times will insert code in your actual WordPress files, which have nothing to do with your database; therefore, a simple database restore will not fix your problem.
To automate the backup process of your hosting files, there’s a really cool program out there called SyncBackSE which can do this for you.