WordPress Backups

[jamygolden]

How do you do it?

Also, have you ever needed to backup?

[Chris Coyier]

I’m using VaultPress now, which is great.

Digging Into WordPress uses WP-DBManager which backs up and emails the database out every single day. Really, the database is the only super crucial element of a WP site. If you lost the theme, that sucks, but you can toss up another theme and rebuild something better. If you lost the database, you are up shit creek.

I think the most common need to restore from a backup would be if you got really badly hacked and they got into your DB and changed a ton of stuff. It might be easier to patch the whole and then roll back to an earlier version of the DB.

[TheDoc]

I have never needed a backup, though I actually just recently did this. It’s really as simple as exporting the database and calling it a day. There are a couple plugins that do this, but it’s just as easy to do manually. I think you can even set something up to do it for you every x-days/weeks/months/etc.

For once the Codex actually has a real tutorial on doing something! http://codex.wordpress.org/Backing_Up_Your_Database

For each ‘backup’ you should also be downloading all of the actual files on the server via FTP. A little time consuming in comparison to how quick the DB backup is, but it’s also important.

Edit: Beaten to it by Chris!

[jamygolden]

Awesome thanks Chris & Doc. I haven’t done any major site backups and I was just wondering what standard practice was.

I think I’ll give WP-DBManager a try, and if it doesn’t work out I’ll just export the DB and ftp the necessary files once every so often.

[Author]

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