I recently met a few awesome WordPress bloggers, web developers and other hosting experts in a recent a WordPress meetup event this month. It was an interesting event targeted at educating WordPress developers and website owners about various security threats and how to take care of those.
One thing that stuck me during the meeting was, the realization that so may people are not very deligent about taking backup of their websites. I was amazed to see the number of people who fell in that category not knowing how fatal mistake it may prove to be in case something goes wrong. Many people take backups here and there, but most aren't very systematic in this regard.
On the other hand, people who have had their website hacked or inadvertently changed something they shouldn’t have on their websites or the database, definitely understand the importance of backing up their live websites on a regular basis. They highly recommend being proactive about taking regular backups.
If you have a WordPress blog with one of the shared WordPress hosting packages, my goal is to get you serious about backing up your website properly and regularly.
It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen that your web host tells you that your website is no more. Due to one or the other issue with the server where your website was hosted, your website is 'gone'. To add to the pain, they may not even have a recent back-up of the data. There are several small business owners who have gone through this and suffered the losses. Therefore, it should alarm you if you do not have a local copy of your own website's full backup in your possession.
Derick Shaefer from Copyblogger says, "Go, take a full backup of your website today, burn a CD and put that under your mattress, load it into Dropbox…Do whatever, but get a local copy of your website backup in your hands."
Many WordPress bloggers have backups of their websites stored on the server itself where the website is hosted. That kind of backup is of no use when something happens to the server. In such cases, the backup and the websites are lost together. Isn't it very risky?
How To Take Regular Backup Of Your WordPress Websites
Your website has two different parts that you need to backup if you ever need to restore it:
- The MYSQL database (Most of the important data in a WordPress site is stored there)
- The site files (your theme, content, plugins, images, podcasts, videos etc.)
This interesting blog post titled, How to Back-Up Your WordPress Site Consistently and Automatically gives some good ideas about how you can backup both aspects of your WordPress website in very simple 2-steps process. It is a good article by Michael Pollock.
As a business owner who doesn't want to get into the details of the technology, I need a good wordpress plugin that can take care of these important needs:
- The plugin should backup the entire website/blog, not just the database or just the files.
- Run automatic scheduled backups, not just whenever I remember to take.
- The plugin should be stable and keep up with the updates in WordPress itself.
- The plugin should have a good support from the author in case I run into an issue tomorrow while trying a restore.
- It should be simple to use.
- Preferably it should allow the Backup to be stored automatically somewhere other than on the server so that if the server goes down, my backup isn’t down with it.
I could not find the perfect WordPress plugin that really meets all my needs so far. If you found one, I look forward to learning from you about it in the comments section. However, I found several FREE plugins that do a good job of taking the backup and fulfilling some of the needs I described. Here are my favorite three plugins for this job:
WP Backup Complete is a free plugin that takes the backup of the WordPress database as well as the file system for your website. I personally use it on some of my websites. It does the job well and very easy to operate. Once the backup is taken, it gives you the option to download the zip file to your local machine as well. Once you have a local copy of the backup, you can load it in your cloud storage such as DROPBOX.
This plugin offers a few features beyond backing up WordPress files. Being a Dropbox user is not required to use BackWPup, other services such as Amazon S3, SugarSync and RackSpaceCloud are also supported. This plugin gives you the opportunity to schedule automatic backups as well and they have an active development which I think is a good thing.
Exporting the WordPress XML file, Checking, repairing and optimizing the Database are not common features among WordPress backup plugins. But this plugin is equipped with those features. It also allows you to choose the backup file type (zip, tar, tar.gz, tar.bz2 format). It definitely is one my favorite though the backup jobs can go slow sometimes using this plugin because of the way it runs the backup.
This is by far the most awesome free backup plugin I have seen and used so far. It does what the description says, "Duplicate, clone, backup, move and transfer an entire site from one location to another."
This plugin takes a complete backup of your entire MySQL database, entire directory structure of your website – all files. You can't miss a file from the backup by the time the plugin is done taking the backup. The plugin comes with great documentation and step by step instructions to help you operate with ease.
It is a great plugin to use if your website is less than 200MB in size. For larger sites, you are better off using one of the premium services.
This is a premium plugin that backups everything off your site (database, contents, comments, files, images… everything). What's even more impressive is, it has a Test Restore option where it puts a working version of your site restored on their website to prove it all works! It really does a great job and since it is a premium service, there is an active support that keeps up with the WordPress updates as well.
This most certainly seems to be the winner especially because of its Test Restore option that makes the job of migrating a website instantaneous. If you need to migrate your website from one website hosting service to another, just take a FULL backup of your website and restore it to the new hosting location, and you are done!
However, it comes with a monthly subscription option and you may want to explore their website, read their blog to explore if it fits in your budget and if this is what you need to go for. Your needs should drive your decision, not how cool a particular solution is.
This is the backup service I use for my blog and all other websites. This is the best service I found and I rely on their ability to provide an excellent platform to manage not just backups but many mundane daily tasks for all my WordPress websites from one place.
Two Questions For You
- Do you back-up your WordPress site(s)? If so, how often and what method or plugins do you use?
- Most hosting companies I know, don't. But, does your host provide consistent, automatic and easily accessible back-ups? If so, what web host are you using?
Please share your thoughts in the comments section. I look forward to your responses.
I use PhpMyBackup most times. It is very easy to understand, has many
functions and is open-source. It can even send the backup via mail to
you.
I take backups for my clients once a week and it serves me well. But I am intrigued about blogVault. I am going to try their free option…..
Thanks Jonathan. blogVault is a great premium plugin and their restore is simply smooth. Try them out!
Brother,
Looks like you did not notice “The Duplicator” plugin by LifeInTheGri.com. This is a great plugin to be part of this list.
It is designed to give WordPress Administrators the ability to migrate a
site from one location to another location in 3 easy steps. Just create
a package, download it and install. The plugin also serves as a
simple backup utility if we want.
Here is the URL to the plugin’s website: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/duplicator
I hope it helps those who are looking to find a great backup plugin that is not just free, but also very useful 🙂
O Wow! I guess I really forgot about it. This is an awesome plugin, no doubt. It is simple and powerful PLUS absolutely FREE! Thank you for the reminder!
Dear Mr. Kumar,
This is not only awesome but important post for corporate and educational purposes. In the current tech era there are so many service providers for hosting as well as development but none of them are suggesting for backup the websites and databases. Although, they are providing the same services in their panel, not mentions among clients.
CPanal is the most accepted platform, I have ever seen- providing the backend tools in their panel (so called Secure). And Yes, this is offcource a very user friendly version- Even Non-tech persons can use these stuffs.
We at iNFOTYKE, always recommends few awesome plugins like BackWPup, Online Backup for WordPress, WP-DB-Backup- These are free plugins but if anyone can afford few dollars- BackupBuddy ($75 for personal ) from one of the top WP premium providers for a one-time fee (and now includes integration with DropBox) is also in the pipe.
Thank you so much for your attention on such a most important and secure topic.
Have A Good day!
For iNFOTYKE,
Rishabh Gupta
Awesome, Rishabh! Thank you for very insightful response. I didn’t consider BackupBuddy before. But it may be a good option for a one time fee like that. Thanks for sharing.
I personally prefer BackWPup.
I use a good mix of daily, weekly and monthly backups with auto-deletion of old backup archives which I have described in this article: http://www.wpsecuritychecklist.com/wordpress-backup-the-plugin-and-the-plan/ .
Just my two cents… keep up the great work!
Thank you. Appreciate the inputs.
What a great post, Kumar! My website was just down for a few minutes (hosted by Bluehost.com) and sent me into a panic!
Funny thing is I just downloaded the "Simple Backup" plugin, which is supposed to back up both database and files. Is that good enough, or should I use something like BackWPup? I'm as non-techie as they come… 🙂
Thanks again for sharing this great and important article!
Dr. Alice,
You are very welcome and thank you for your words of appreciation.
If Simple Backup does the job well, you may not need another plugin. I am in favor of testing the backup once to make sure it really does the job the plugin description claims that it does.
And if the backup is working fine, I hope you do keep a copy of your latest backup in your hands. I upload a copy to Dropbox. I highly recommend doing that or keep on a USB drive in your possession.
Regards,
Kumar
Hey Kumar, have you come across ManageWP?
It looks like a company based in Serbia, and ideal for people managing multiple WordPress sites, as it allows you to roll out upgrades on sites, plugins and themes, as well as moderate comments across all the properties. As a comprehensive tool, it also allows you to run full backups across your entire set of properties. And you can use it for publishing and managing content, across multiple sites.
The thing that I like about their model, is that you can set the automated backups to automatically store in Dropbox, email or Google Drive, and their pricing model is cheaper than VaultPress but with way more features rolled into it.
Oh Wow! I didn’t know about this plugin and it definitely sounds interesting. Thanks for sharing Rehman. I am going to explore this plugin and I will share some feedback after my team does some work with this plugin. Appreciate your inputs, my friend!
Backup Buddy is a popular premium option for backing up a WordPress site. They have also recently increased the offsite storage or “stash” from 512MB to 1GB. You might also try the Duplicator plugin which is available from the WordPress plugins directory.
Keep backup daily is a good plugin to take regular backups.
Okay! Thank you for sharing Fahad.
This is something really handy for many…
Coz I really find it difficult to take regular backup so i have set the default setting in our server to weekly.
This is something really cool and helpful
Thanks for sharing Gauraw.
Hello Esther, Thank you for sharing your experience. I didn’t take backups for a long time, until I was in trouble once. But since then, I understood the value and here I go 🙂
I think you’re in the same boat as a lot of people, business owners/individuals that don’t want to have to get into the complicated details for backing up and/or migrating a site, especially when there are plugins available to do that. Great feedback on some of the tools you use!
Thanks for this post man….Its very usfull for my WP blog
I create backups of my wordpress databases on a regular basis via command line as described at rosehosting.com/blog/backup-and-restore-your-mysql-database