A current backup of your own WordPress Blogs is elementary to be able to recover his blog in case of data loss or a hacker attack. This article shows you several ways to do this.
3 ways to backup WordPress
The secret of success of WordPress is certainly the fact that it can be used by people who are less technically versed to create their own blog on the net. Due to its popularity, many people also use WordPress, which makes their servers attractive for hackers and data thieves with an irregular update routine. Whether they trust themselves to do the work of maintaining the blog software and the server themselves or rely on a commercial provider, up-to-date backups are not witchcraft for both laymen and professionals.
Commercial suppliers
One of the simplest options is the VaultPress service. It is offered by the developers of WordPress (Automattic) and requires no technical knowledge. The backup is done via a plugin, by simply entering your Vaultpress account and the access data of the hoster. Afterwards you don't have to worry about the backup process or saving. This luxury costs 9$ per month.
Another option for automatic backup is the plugin BackWPup. You can choose between a Free and Pro version, but you only need the latter if you want to take advantage of support. The advantage of this plugin is that your backup can be automatically saved to cloud storage. In the Free version are available for this Dropbox, S3 services, Microsoft Azure, RackspaceCloud and SugarSync to choose from.
Handwork
Of course, you don't have to use a plugin either, especially if you have a larger project on a self-managed server that you administer yourself. However, make sure that you do not only use the current Database but also the complete WordPress directory. Here are not only important files for plugins, but also uploaded images. The database can be easily exported with phpMyAdmin. If you choose this way, it is definitely recommended to automate the process. Irregular backups are better than none at all, but can still be annoying. For this purpose we write the following script with an editor of our choice.
#!/bin/sh
mysqldump -add-drop-table -username -ppassword tablename > wordpressbackup.sql
tar -cf wpbackup.tar
and make it executable with chmod +x skriptname.sh
Then edit the crontabs using cron -e as follows:
00 5 * * 0 /path to script/script name.sh
From now on your server will create a backup of the database every day at 5 am. Optionally you can run a cronjob on a server or at home, which automatically downloads the backup once a day. The other possibility would be to send it via curl to a location of your choice.
Conclusion
Whether you have a private or a business blog, the topic of backup should not be neglected. WordPress offers very good free and commercial solutions for creating and securing backups due to its popularity. If you pay a small monthly fee, you can be sure that your data is stored redundantly and is always available. If you store the backup locally, you are more likely to be hit by a defective disk or a break-in than in a data center. When doing a manual backup, it is important to take care to automate the necessary processes with scripts. Even a rudimentary knowledge of Linux is an advantage for this.
