One of the best tip which you will get to keep your WordPress blog secure is by keep taking WordPress backup. There are many WordPress backup plugins available in the WordPress plugin directory, but very few of them allow complete backup. When we talk about complete backup, it means taking backup of plugin, themes, backup wp-content folder. More over, it’s always recommend to automatic backup WordPress to make sure, you have most recent version of backup of your blog.
Why WordPress backup is important?
Before, we move ahead why it’s important for every Blogger to configure automatic WordPress backup and always have a backup file of their Wp blog. WordPress is a software and it runs on php any MySQL and also its a Webhosting which hosts all the file. No matter what, when anything is related to computer and Webhosting, it can crash any day. Your server or Website might be hacked by a hacker or someone can login and delete your complete WordPress directory. In the end you will be left with nothing, but feeling sorry about never taking your WordPress blog backup. All of their hard work would be gone in a jiffy.
Ironically, it is actually quite easy to automate backup of WordPress blogs. I will discuss 3 methods here that let you do scheduled automatic backups of your complete WordPress website. This includes WordPress database, and all the related files, including theme files, plugins, and images.
Important files to backup in WordPress:
Though, you can configure complete WordPress full backup of your Wp installation, but technically we need just one file and one complete folder as backup.
- Database backup
- Wp-content folder backup
3 Ways to take Automatic WordPress backup:
1) Automatic WordPress Backup Plugin
Automatic WordPress Backup Plugin is one of the easiest method to completely backup your WordPress website. It will create a zipped backup of your WordPress website, and will upload it to Amazon S3. This will be a completed automated regular backup without your involvement at all. You can schedule backup per your convenience. Amazon S3 is pretty cheap nowadays – around $0.1 per GB. This means that if you decide to do a weekly backup of your blog, and the blog is less than 250MB zipped, then you will just spend $0.1 per month for automating backup of your WordPress. You can download the plugin here.
2) IDrive Plugin for WordPress
IDrive plugin for WordPress works in a similar manner as Automatic WordPress Backup Plugin. It will backup your database, as well as files, and will store them in online IDrive account. IDrive account comes with a 2GB of free space, so you can store multiple copies of your backup for free without migrating to paid account.
IDrive plugin comes with some other nice features:
- Smart Backup: Only Incremental transfer of data in each subsequent backup
- Windows Restore Application to restore your blog data to your Windows machine easily.
- Lets you create snapshots of previous versions
Even though this solution is completely free, I have listed it at second position as this imposes the limit of 2GB. You can of course migrate to paid account of IDrive, but that might turn out to be more expensive that Amazon S3. If you have a small blog, then this would be a good solution to start with. And when you blog grows a lot, you can move to first solution. You can download this plugin here.
3) Setup your Own Backup Solution for Free
The methods mentioned above are really the easiest and best ways to backup your WordPress website. However, there are ways to setup your own backup solution. It would be a bit lengthy to setup, but would still be completely automated.
Step 1: Install a plugin to automatically backup WordPress DB
There are many plugins available that can backup WordPress database on a regular basis, and can email the backup to you. My favorite one is WP-DB-Backup. Start with installing one of these plugins. You can setup the backup schedule, and provide your email address on which you will receive the backup. Now your WordPress database backup part is complete. You still need to backup other WordPress files.
Step 2: Backup WordPress Files
To automatically backup WordPress files on a scheduled basis, you need to use a FTP client that can automatically connect to your website, and download the files. There are many free FTP clients that can do that. My personal favorite is Cobian Backup. In this, you can specify all the folders that you want to backup, frequency of backup, and destination of backups. Cobian Backup will make a zipped backup of your WordPress files as per your scheduled. I have specified my Dropbox folder as my destination folder. This ensures that my backups are actually stored online as well, so I will not lose anything even if my machine crashes.
All these methods do a comprehensive WordPress backup. If you use any other method, do share those in comments.
This is a guest post by Ishan who blogs at Ilovefreesoftware. If you like to write for Shoutmeloud, do read: Shoutmeloud guest posting guidelines.
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{ 20 comments… read them below or add one }
i think only huge WP blogs/sites those needed third party backup
I like manual back ups. Full back up at the end of the month
What if some thing goes wrong become completion of month ?
Great share
IDrive suited all my requirement … thanks for the help 
I was a fan of WP-DB-Backup. But now I’m think to migrate to iDrive Backup. Thanks for the post.
I am also using WP DP Plugin. Hostgator also has some great feature for backing up wordpress blog in a few simple steps.
Mine is WP-DB-Backup, i love it
Buddy – WP-DB Backup would backup just your database. This leaves out all your template files, plugins, and images.
IDrive gives 12 GB FREE account, not 2 GB. There’s a little trick behind to get that 12 GB account for free. Read here:
http://tipsotricks.com/2010/04/idrive-get-free-12-gb-space-for-online.html
I use the WP DB backup plugin & do manual backups of the whole directory, store it in my HDD & External HDD too.
I do it manually because I hv a relatively fast net speed..slow net users can go for host backups or as mentioned by ishan if ur blog is new then try iDrive
wow….nice article……now backup made very easy with this…..
thanks to the writer….
Cheers for that, ive been meaning to set up a back up solution for a while now, this got me to do it thanks! I went for IDrive and it was so quick and easy
Nice list buddy. I’m using DB-Manager plugins to scheduled backup on my blog.
Thanks for the great info, buddy. I think most blog owners only backup their databases and not the other plugins, themes and content files. I am also in the same league. Now I need to decide whether to go for idrive or manually download the content files to my hard drive.
I am using DB-Manager now. I was using WP-DB_backup some time back but since I upgraded to WP3.0 it has stopped working and sending me weekly db backups to my email.
So now with DB Manager I have regular backups to my gmail account in a separate folders as well as my hard drive.
Want to do something similar for my content files.
How much secure this is? since we are saving our database content on 3rd party plugin server for example of iDrive.
this is going to be very helpful for newbies like me..you have explained everything in great detail..thnx a tonn…
Is Using a DB-Backup Plugin is enough. I mean does that Database contains all things. I mean if I have to Change my Host Provider, then can I use this Backup to Upload it to my New Host Provider.
@Harry Sehgal: Backup would backup just your database. This leaves out all your template files, plugins, and images.
HI, I used i Drive backup plugin as it uses Cron Job internally,It affect on my HG baby plan ,number of process increase very drastically and then HG disable my account. When I removed it ,I Come to normal mode.So I suggest you to check your Process state from Cpanel before trying this.
You can BackUp WordPress, it also supports Shared Hosting Environment – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/backupwordpress/