How To: Automatically Backup Wordpress

With Box.net and regular backups to DVD, I think (hope) I have covered most eventualities on my PC and disaster recovery should be a relatively straight forward process.

One of the areas I have less control over though, is the hosting of my web sites. While my hosting company has a backup solution integrated into their hosting packages there is still the risk of loosing all my hard work! Not the stuff of nightmares, I mean the risk is low but for sheer peace of mind, there is an answer.

Included with the Wordpress (2.0 +), is the excellent Wordpress Database Backup (WDB) by Scott Merrill. I have been using WDB since Wordpress 1.5 and it offers simple, on demand backups of your tables relating to Wordpress or any other tables in that database for that matter. The backup can either be saved on your server, downloaded to your computer or sent as an email to a designated email address.

Scott also offers a number of other useful plugins though and the one that complements WDB is WP-Cron1. This simple plugin is designed to run different actions periodically, working essentially as a scheduler. WP-cron when installed offers a seamless integration into WDB though, allowing the automatic backup of your Wordpress installation on a daily basis.

Instructions for Use

  1. Download the plugin from here.
  2. Extract the ‘wp-cron.php’ file into your plugins folder and upload to your server.
  3. Login to your Wordpress dashboard and activate ‘WP-Cron’ from the plugins menu.
  4. Click ‘Manage’ then ‘Backup’
  5. Scroll down to ‘Schedule a Backup’
  6. Enter in the email address to send your backups to. Ensure the schedule is set to ‘Daily’.
  7. Tick the additional tables to backup. In my case I simply backup the extra tables relating to my Wordpress installation. e.g the ‘Bad Behaviour’, ‘Tags’ and ‘Search Meter’ tables.
  8. Click the ‘Submit’ button at the bottom.
  9. You’re all set, sleep easy!

  1. Cron, meaning time is derived from the Greek term Chronus and is based on the same premise as the Unix program Cron or Crontab. [back]
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This entry was written by Bish, posted on 07/10/2006 at 21:37, filed under How To, Wordpress. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

5 Responses to “How To: Automatically Backup Wordpress”

  1. CypherHackz says:
    08/10/2006 at 18:49

    nice post you have there. thanks for the info. :)

    Reply
  2. Bish says:
    08/10/2006 at 19:02

    Hope it helps.

    Reply
  3. BroadTech says:
    06/02/2007 at 14:18

    Free Backup Service from BackupMyBlog Beta version…

    …

    Reply
  4. Run As Never Get, Wander as Never. COMe » Free Backup Service from BackupMyBlog Beta version says:
    06/02/2007 at 14:41

    [...] Although I don’t have a chance to restore from backup yet. So, can’t comment whether it works flawlessly or not. But, the good point of having an account at BackupMyBlog is to the second source of data which is backed up automatically for you. (You can also do the same thing with WP-Cron plugin, read How to automatically backup Wordpress from BenBishop.)(Or upgrade your Wordpress Database Backup to version 2.0. It supports scheduling database backup.) [...]

    Reply
  5. Online Backup says:
    07/03/2007 at 08:02

    We used an online backup program to do this. Created a myql connection to our server then it just dumps data to an ecrypted site each night. They do online backups for all kinds of stuff

    http://www.disksave.com
    Online Backup

    Reply

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