Backing up your wordpress blog

Trusting your web-host backups – Not Recommented!

There are many ways to keep your blog data safe for a rainy day, you can start by using a host that keeps an accessable snapshot backup of your blog data (the actual ftp directory) and your MySQL database. This alone can save the day in most cases of a fire .

In other cases when the snapshots are not sufficient due to some tech guy that accidently split coffee over the backups it is advice to keep an offsite copy of your WordPress files and media. If you only update you blog once every blue moon, then you can stick to a manual backup of your data once on a while, but if you are a problogger or are using WordPress for a content thirsty commercial websites then you surly need some real assurance that you are not going to get wet.

Manual Backup of your WordPress blog

If you are already friendly with FTP and know how to install a plugin or two you can easily backup your site by downloading the following directories :

/wp-content/themes
/wp-content/plugins
/wp-content/uploads

I strongly suggest un-selecting the option “Organize my uploads into month- and year-based folders” in the Settings > Miscellaneous WordPress menu. In addition to these directories you also need to create a backup of your WordPress database. I recommend installing the wp-dbmanager plugin, this little goody with easily help you create a backup file of your database and if you set up the plugin it can even email you the database backup file once in a while (whenever you decide). It is an old plugin that still does a great job!

VaultPress Coming Soon!

The guys that created WordPress did it again… and they are now offering out beta access to a new real time backup service called VaultPress. A nifty name for a simple service that makes sure that your entire WordPress enviroment is safely stored away. The service requires installing a plugin on your WordPress that takes care of the whole process in the background. I am sure that it also takes care of optimizing the backup process to minimize the amount of data that is required to be sent over to the backup cloud. You can read more about it on there blog. They are currently in beta so go try it out before the beta is over.

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