How to Setup a WordPress Backup System
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How to Setup a WordPress Backup System

by David Turnbull · 24 comments

Most blog­gers stress the impor­tance of back­ups but have lack­lus­ter sys­tems in place them­selves. Luck­ily, because of Word­Press’ bril­liant com­mu­nity there are plu­g­ins avail­able to help even the lazi­est of blog­gers. But I must point out that there are far more advanced backup sys­tems that you may want to explore as your blog grows.

In the early days restor­ing from a day old backup is not that big of a deal, but if you’re post­ing mul­ti­ple times per day or get a large amount of com­ments then a tool such as rsync for fast and incre­men­tal back­ups may be worth look­ing into. In most cases that setup isn’t par­tic­u­larly fea­si­ble how­ever, which is why the sys­tem I’ll describe is the best choice for most Word­Press users.

Setup Your Word­Press Backup System

Ama­zon S3 Backups

Ama­zon S3 is an afford­able and scal­able data host­ing solu­tion pro­vided by Ama­zon that acts as a great des­ti­na­tion for your Word­Press back­ups. WP S3 Back­ups is the plu­gin you’ll need, but it takes a few steps before the backup sys­tem will get going.

  1. Start by cre­at­ing an Ama­zon Web Ser­vices account.
  2. Once you’ve done that you’ll need to sign up for Ama­zon S3.
  3. When that’s done login to your account and go to the Access Iden­ti­fiers page.
  4. On this page there are two keys, Your Access Key ID and Your Secret Access Key. Make sure you keep your secret key a secret, oth­er­wise other peo­ple could rack up a hefty bill you’ll be liable for.
  5. Within your Word­Press admin­is­tra­tion area nav­i­gate to S3 Backup, located under the Set­tings tab.
  6. Copy and paste access keys into the two text fields on this page.
  7. In the text box labelled Or cre­ate a bucket: type out any name you want to iden­tify as your back­ups folder on your Ama­zon S3 account.
  8. Select the Backup sched­ule you’d like and then the Parts of your blog to back up (I backup every­thing except plugins).
  9. Hit the Save Changes but­ton and you’re done.

If you get an error in rela­tion to not being able to con­nect to your Ama­zon S3 account, wait a few min­utes. I found it took a while for the plu­gin to rec­og­nize the account had been created.

Avoid rack­ing up a huge Ama­zon S3 bill by using an appli­ca­tion such as Trans­mit which allows you to login to your Ama­zon S3 account and man­age files. Every 2 – 3 months log into your account and prune older back­ups to keep costs low.

Email Back­ups

WP-DB-Backup is a Word­Press plu­gin that allows you to auto­mat­i­cally and man­u­ally backup your Word­Press data­base by send­ing it to your email account. Most peo­ple would just setup the plu­gin itself, but we’re going a tad more tech­ni­cal to get an over­all smoother backup sys­tem in the long run.

  1. If you don’t have a Gmail account, set one up now. If you already have one then that’s fine too.
  2. Cre­ate an email for­warder such as backup@yoursitename.com. This can be done via cPanel, Plesk and most other pop­u­lar con­trol pan­els.  Direct emails from this email to your Gmail account.
  3. In the WP-DB-Backup con­fig­u­ra­tion area within Word­Press make it so back­ups are sent to the email for­warder. In terms of backup fre­quency I feel once per day is fine.
  4. Head over to gmail.com and go to the Set­tings page and click on the Fil­ters tab.
  5. Click on the Cre­ate a new fil­ter link.
  6. In the text box labeled To: type out the email address you setup pre­vi­ously (backup@yoursitename.com) and then click on the Next Step » button.
  7. On this page select the check boxes labeled Skip the Inbox (Archive It), Mark as read and Never send it to spam.
  8. On this same page, select the check box Apply the label: and then via the drop­down menu select the New label… option, and name it some­thing like “backups”.
  9. Finally, press the Cre­ate Fil­ter button.

Now, with just a few min­utes work you have a com­pletely auto­mated Word­Press data­base backup sys­tem and all the back­ups will be sent out of sight so they aren’t clog­ging up your inbox. And since you’re using Gmail it’s unlikely you’ll run out of stor­age any time soon.

You can use the Word­Press Backup plu­gin to backup your /wp-content folder. Setup is once again straight for­ward, and you can direct the back­ups to the same email for­warder cre­ated above.

Host Back­ups

If your web host doesn’t per­form their own daily back­ups then it’s prob­a­bly time to switch. These sys­tems cer­tainly shouldn’t be relied upon as your sole backup sys­tem but in most cases your web host will be able to restore back­ups faster than you can and it’s just a good idea to have as many lay­ers of pro­tec­tion as possible.

Now what…?

If you’ve done every­thing up to this point then good job, your data is more secure than the vast major­ity of blog­gers out there. But if you’re like me there’s a chance you’ve caught “the bug” and want to find out every­thing you can about pre­vent­ing your blog from implod­ing whilst you sleep.

If you have any­thing in par­tic­u­lar you want me to cover then feel free to leave that in the com­ments, but over the com­ing weeks and months I aim to tackle the unsexy side of blog­ging: back­ups, secu­rity, and all the other behind the scenes stuff that doesn’t get too much attention.

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Article by David Turnbull

Visit David's blog

Oh, hi there! My name is David Turnbull and I am a self proclaimed Barefoot Geek: a geek who uses their knowledge to simplify and genuinely improve their life. I write about that sort of stuff on my blog, Adventures of a Barefoot Geek and share my Wordpress evangelism and knowledge about the unsexy side of blogging (backups, security etc) right here on Blogussion.

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Igor Helps You Succeed August 19, 2009 at 3:25 am

I have been using WP DB Backups plugin, but it constantly shows an error message and therefore I can’t back my stuff up. Advice?

Igor
Igor Helps You Succeed´s last blog ..Google Search To Become Even Googlier

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David Turnbull August 19, 2009 at 3:53 am

Well I’m not sure what’s actually wrong with the plugin because I’m not a code monkey, so the only advice I can offer is just stick with the Amazon S3 Backup plugin, which can backup your database as well.

There’s also this plugin: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/dbc-backup/ but I don’t have any personal experience with it.
David Turnbull´s last blog ..21 Ways to Never Feel Rushed in Your Business

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used tires August 22, 2009 at 12:45 pm

Can you be more specific with your error Igor? Perhaps I can help you, I use this plugin as well, and have not had any problems =D

Till then,

Jean

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Igor Helps You Succeed August 19, 2009 at 4:02 am

Hmm…

thanks anyway David
Igor Helps You Succeed´s last blog ..Google Search To Become Even Googlier

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Dean Saliba August 19, 2009 at 6:59 am

I back up my database every day. I always keep a copy of my theme on my computer as well.
Dean Saliba´s last blog ..July 2009 Blog Income Report

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InternetHow Blog August 19, 2009 at 6:59 am

I think this would be quite handy, when I upgrade the wordpress and the design on my blog. Thank you.
InternetHow Blog´s last blog ..How a simple taxi ride made me earn £110 per week?

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Stefan August 19, 2009 at 7:33 am

E-mail backup is a great method to save a lot of time. I have a specific mail-account set up only for this purpose. Taking backup from several of my sites.
Stefan´s last blog ..How to Install Wordpress on Hostgator

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Seth August 19, 2009 at 8:39 am

Thanks for the post David. I personally prefer email backups for my site and agree with Stefan that an independent email address is the best way to do this.
Seth W´s last blog ..How to Setup a Wordpress Backup System

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David Turnbull August 19, 2009 at 8:09 pm

With Gmail filters it’s not always necessary though. I find it easier to just have a single account. But everyone’s different I guess. :-)
David Turnbull´s last blog ..21 Ways to Never Feel Rushed in Your Business

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Jeannette Paladino August 19, 2009 at 9:41 pm

Excellent post with the various ways to safely backup your blog. Thank you.
Jeannette Paladino´s last undefined ..If you register your site for free at

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Andy August 20, 2009 at 2:13 am

If you are on Windows and need to backup just about anything to S3 try CloudBerry Backup. It is powered by Amazon S3 reliable and cost efficient storage. If you want to take part in beta sign up on the website What safer place to keep your files than Amazon’s servers?

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Reza Winandar August 20, 2009 at 4:29 am

I prefer Blogger.com rather than Wordpress, why? Because there is no need to backup, upgrade, updating plugins, and paying for hosting. But custom domain is very important.

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Seth August 20, 2009 at 11:13 am

I would disagree with you about Blogger. This is the biggest problem! Blogger cannot be updated, there are no plug-ins to add features, and at anytime blogger can drop your blog! To me it is definitely worth the few dollars a month to get maximum customization. Plus, the theme’s available to WP are so much better!
Seth´s last blog ..How to Setup a Wordpress Backup System

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David Turnbull August 20, 2009 at 7:50 pm

I definitely agree with Seth on this one. Using Blogger is fine for a personal blog but for anything more than that it’s just not a very good solution.
David Turnbull´s last blog ..21 Ways to Never Feel Rushed in Your Business

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Martin August 20, 2009 at 6:54 am

Your post is something I would call “a handy and helpful advice”. Really this is more simple than many people would think and you show this in very easy and complete way. Making backups should be basic for anyone who work with advanced tools and applications. Without backups sometimes work of entire day could go straight to hell. I think that everyone who is not using backup copies is risking of losing a lot.

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Jonathan Soroko August 20, 2009 at 10:29 am

I’ve been using the backup plugin on one site – and so far am impressed. However – doesn’t this eventually run up against the size limits on email attachments? How can the contents of an entire blog not bump up against email size filters?

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hospitalera August 21, 2009 at 7:52 am

I do a regular update via my cpanel to my hard disc, additional to what my webhost does. From what I read in your post, I like the gmail solution best, my add this also to the routine, thanks for great tips, SY
hospitalera´s last blog ..If You’ve Put in the Effort to Write a Blog Post, Go the Extra Mile and Make That Post Easy to Ready

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Anna @ Best Mineral Makeup September 3, 2009 at 8:11 am

I back my blog up once a month but I do it the old fashoined way – I copy all the files to my PC….It is time consuming but I know that I have all the info without fail and can then sleep a little easier…
Anna @ Best Mineral Makeup´s last blog ..Where Can I Buy Raw Mineral Makeup?

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Nose reshaping before and after September 23, 2009 at 7:09 pm

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Wordpress Tips February 25, 2010 at 4:06 pm

Even i am one of the lazy blogger

Thanks to let me know about the importance of backups

I understand how important there are and the ways to take back ups easily

Thanks a ton for the share
Wordpress Tips´s last blog ..Diet Pills Enhance Beauty Too | Health Living Tips

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Young March 7, 2010 at 2:42 am

Nice tips. How about Online Backup for WordPress and WordPress Online Automated Backup? They sounds good too, and will store your database on the third server like Amazon s3 but free.
Young´s last blog ..Top 10 Websites for You to Unfollow Inactive Twitter Users

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