Backup your WordPress Blog

You don’t need to have too many catastrophes to realise how important backup is. I remember accidentally deleting an entire customer database for early in my career… with no backup. Since then I’ve been paranoid about it, even forcing my family into rigorous backup routines just to protect their information. This article talks about how to backup a WordPress blog.

Backing up your WordPress blog is just as important, but generally not as easy. And the real challenge is doing it in a way that will enable you to quickly bring your blog back to life if disaster strikes.

I’ve been using Multiplier for years now to do a WordPress backup and only recently spent money on the product to get the automated backup features going. So here’s some steps:

Buy it

This is really cheap insurance. The product is $39 for the personal version and that lets you backup 3 websites. You can do it using the free version if you like, but you’ll miss out on:

• Having it automated
• Having it stored in the cloud (Dropbox, Amazon, Google Drive etc)

The version you’ll get from the WordPress plugin site doesn’t include the premium features, so after you’ve bought it you’ll get access to download the full version that includes the cloud drive integrations and scheduling functions.

Configuration

Upload and activate the plugin just like any other WordPress plugin. After installing it you’ll be prompted to active your license.

Copy and paste your license key that you got with your purchase confirmation email in and you’re now ready to configure the cloud drive.

Navigate to Duplicator Pro > Storage > Add New. I’m going to use Dropbox in my example:

You’ll need to walk through a slightly clunky authorisation process where you click on Connect to Dropbox and then Authorise and then you’ll need to provide your Dropbox credentials to authenticate again. Finally you’ll then go back to WordPress and click Finalise Setup. It’s not complicated, but it’s just a few clicks to get all the way through… and you only need to do this once. Next, how to backup a WordPress blog automatically!

Scheduling: the key to backup a WordPress blog

The hard work is now all done — so you can now schedule your backups. Generally I’d recommend a daily backup, like this:

Navigate to Duplicator Pro > Schedules > Add New. There should be a default template that you can use. The default template basically means that your file system and database will be backed up and everything will be included. If you wanted to you could create a different template that excludes specific things from your backup.

Make sure you tick Dropbox in the storage list, and you can un-tick Local also. Set the repeater drop down to Daily and set the frequency to 1 day.

Save your schedule and you’re done.

Test it out

You can now run your backup to test it out. From the schedules screen mouse over the newly created schedule and click on Run Now:

The process will start straight away and give you a progress bar showing the backup process followed by the upload process. At completion, jump over to Dropbox and you should see a zip file added to your chosen Dropbox folder (Normally /Apps/Duplicator Pro). You’ll also have a php file added into the same location which you’ll use if you ever have to restore your website.

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