Backing up your data has been a necessary part of life at least as long as we’ve had computers. Far too many people live out on the raggedy edge, care free and unafraid, never giving a second thought about backups.
Until something bad happens and they loose a bunch of their data, that is.
Our office here at SuccessCREEations is almost exclusively a Mac office so we run Time Machine backups hourly on our work computers to an external hard drive. Not only that, but we also back up every single computer off site via JungleDisk every night.
Redundancy is a good thing!
Two Recent Examples
I was reminded about need for backing up your WordPress site by recent examples that happened to people I know.
In the first case, Viveka Von Rosen’s site was attacked by a hacker. I wrote about that last week when I explained how to protect WordPress from hackers.
Also last week, Cheryl Smith had her site go down for, um, other reasons.
Fortunately it worked out well for both of them. But in both cases it could have been much less stressful if they were backing up their sites regularly.
That said, here are three easy way to back up your WordPress site.
1. WP DB Backup Plugin
My primary backup for years has been the WP DB Backup plugin. You can set this plugin to automatically backup your WordPress MySQL database and email it to you. A Gmail address would be great for this.
As a note, at this writing the plugin page says it’s compatible through WordPress 2.9.2 but I’ve not encountered any problems using it on version 3.0.
That works great if you already have all of your theme files and your uploads in your possession like I do. But if you don’t you might need a more substantial backup system.
2. Automatic WordPress Backup Plugin
The Automatic WordPress Backup Plugin is an option to back up everything on your site. It will also send the backups to your Amazon S3 account. (And if you don’t have one they have a video on the site to show how to set it up.)
Amazon S3 is the same service that my JungleDisk backs up our computer to. And I’m also using Amazon S3 to host all the videos on New Media Profit Path as well. I’ve really been surprised how inexpensive it’s been for me. I’ve got several Gigs of storage and it’s still under $1 a month.
To me, that’s mighty inexpensive insurance!
Unfortunately this method does take some technical skilz to set up. If that’s not you there is another option.
3. VaultPress
If you’re looking for worry free backups then VaultPress may be the right answer. You just install and turn a plugin, activate it (which is easier than it sounds) and VaulPress will take care of everything else for you.
Their starting price of $15 per month is not insignificant. But if your business depends on your WordPress site then $180 a year is a very small price to pay to make sure that you don’t loose any of your critical data.
So there you have it. Three easy ways to backup your WordPress site.
How do you backup your site?
Fortunately, I had my site backed up and the restore went well. I’m not a techie sort really, even though I teach people how to use social media. So I leave the heavy techie lifting for people way smarter than me.
yes, wp db backup plugin is one of the most awesome plugins that I have used!!
Hi Chris,
I just wanted to stop by and say thanks for mentioning the Automatic WordPress Backup plugin. Great job covering the topic btw.
~ mel
Hi Chris,
I just noticed that the name of our backup plugin is slightly off in your article. It’s actually Automatic WordPress Backup, rather than WordPress Automatic Backup. Hope it’s not too much of a bother to get that changed. Thanks again for the mention.
~ mel
Thanks for pointing that out, Mel. Edited the post to correct it.
Though part of the confusion is probably because you chose a name that is so close to Automattic. People may mistakenly think y’all are officially part of the WordPress parent company.
These are the posts that help us newbies out, i didn’t even think about this, nor as to why anyone would want to hack my site, but i will be installing a plugin shortly, thankyou!
Great advice in this post. We’re running tests on a new WordPress blog and hadn’t put much thought into how to back it up. One of these plugins should do the job. Thanks!
wp Time Machine rocks … Offsite backups are key … Pick between Dropbox, S3 & an FTP server …
Full disclosure: I’m the author.
Heya Paul! I use Dropbox & S3 both. Sounds like your plugin has some nice features. Thanks for pointing it out to us.