End of the month when was the last time you backed up your blog?

Sunday, May 31st, 2009 at 11:36 am

Got a tweet yesterday which I promptly retweeted from CaptnAffiliate (someone you should follow if you are a marketer.)

@CaptnAffiliate: If you haven’t backed up your blogs recently, this is as good a time as any to do it!

It served as a good reminder and that is the reason for the post. My programmer does ours each week. This means we lose at most a week of blog posts if something goes wrong on the server.

There are two different ways to back up WordPress and which one YOU should use depends on how many plugins you have and how much tweaking you have done.

The easy way is to use the built in exporter in WordPress. This is quite easy to do just login and go to Tools – Export

2009-05-31 1148

Click the Download Export File and save it to your computer. (I have a separate folder just for blog backups so I can find them easily.)

2009-05-31 1151

This is the easy way but…

Yes there is always a but it only keeps your post content. If you are using a bunch of plugins or a complex theme like Flexibility that has various settings you have not saved all of those items.

The first way will give you your content but all of your settings are gone if you ever have to redo your blog. That is why I pull the actual data base for the blog. This will have all of the information on your settings and if you need to reinstall it you keep all of the settings changes you have made that are data base driven.

To save your data base I have started using a plugin called WordPress Data Base Backup (it will be added to the Power WordPress Users set on Monday) as it is easier to use for most than just exporting the data base through PHPMyAdmin. Once the plugin is installed just click Tools – Backup.

2009-05-31 1212

Then pick the additional tables you want to download (I grab them all but you can and should skip any stats data base as they can be huge and are not necessary for getting your blog back in case of catastrophe) by checking the boxes while holding the shift key.Then click 2009-05-31 1213

Check the download to your computer then click Backup now!

2009-05-31 1214

Save that file to your computer where you can find it and you are done.

Now this plugin will allow you to schedule the data base to be emailed to you but I always do it manually and save it to my computer so I know..

That I have a good copy
That is was actually done

Automation is great but it is too easy in my humble opinion to depend on that and God forbid you need it and something went wrong with the automation and you do not have a current backup. We back up once a week as part of our regular schedule of tasks. I have discussed your content and data bases here but you should also keep copies of any files you have edited such as your theme files. Just because you edited your header or footer of your theme in your dashboard you should always save a copy to your computer.

You can grab the basic theme files again easily but if you are like me and have editied your themes having a copy will save you having to do it again in case of catastrophe.

Which ever way you use, it is the end of the month and it is a good time to do your backup RIGHT NOW!

Hopefully this will be a total waste of your time and you will never ever need this backup but believe me, the one time that you do need this backup the time you spent doing it will be time well spent.

Mike Paetzold