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.
- Start by creating an Amazon Web Services account.
- Once you’ve done that you’ll need to sign up for Amazon S3.
- When that’s done login to your account and go to the Access Identifiers page.
- 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.
- Within your WordPress administration area navigate to S3 Backup, located under the Settings tab.
- Copy and paste access keys into the two text fields on this page.
- 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.
- Select the Backup schedule you’d like and then the Parts of your blog to back up (I backup everything except plugins).
- 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.
- If you don’t have a Gmail account, set one up now. If you already have one then that’s fine too.
- 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.
- 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.
- Head over to gmail.com and go to the Settings page and click on the Filters tab.
- Click on the Create a new filter link.
- 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.
- On this page select the check boxes labeled Skip the Inbox (Archive It), Mark as read and Never send it to spam.
- 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”.
- 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.
The Discussion
Leave a Comment Read Again?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 =-.
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 =-.
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
Hmm…
thanks anyway David
.-= Igor Helps You Succeed´s last blog ..Google Search To Become Even Googlier =-.
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 =-.
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? =-.
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 =-.
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 =-.
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 =-.
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 =-.
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?
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.
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 =-.
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 =-.
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.
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?
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 =-.
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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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 =-.
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 =-.
Great stuff! Going to take a good amout of time to absorb the article.
Your site is wonderful and the post is good and i see that we can have more of this kind of posts in the coming days, hope you can also viste my site.
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