Easy 5 Step Automation of WordPress Backups

 

On November 11th McColo was turned off for hosting many spam, child porn, and malware sites (article at WashingtonPost.com). But there were more than a few legitimate sites hosted there as well. And now they're scrambling to rebuild their blogs, sites, and all their content somewhere else. And in thinking about the honest sites that are now down how many are trying to relocate without a good backup. So they're in a pickle right now.

But you can take action now and get that Wordpress site uploading itself to email and then backup to internet for rock solid security. We prototyped, tested, and then put together a way that anyone with a WordPress site can use to automatically backup.

 

Automated WordPress Backup to Internet

A. First off, choose the email address you want to use to receive the initial backups. As long as it's one that downloads to your local system (no web email for this, use Outlook, SeaMonkey, Evolution, you get the idea) you don’t want to use a email address hosted with your domain as that could also fail with the rest of your site.

B. There is the hard way (manually with CRON) or the easy way (google and download WP-DB-Backup and WP-Cron) to automate the process. Activate both plugins in your WordPress plugin management page after you've downloaded, upzipped, and uploaded them to your site. WP-Cron includes a whole bunch of various plugins. Just activate the ones called WP-Cron and WP-DB-Backup.

C. Now, with the plugins activated, click the “Manage” tab in WordPress. You’ll see a menu item called “Backup”. You want this one. There are some optional settings for doing manual backups. Skip that and go to the section titled “Scheduled Backup” (at the bottom). Make sure you see WP-Cron, if not, you need to make sure it's enabled. In the settings for this section, set the schedule to “Daily” (or whatever timeframe is appropriate for your site). Enter the email address you selected where it says "Email backup to:". The final thing is the option to include non default WordPress tables. We think bakcing them all up is the safe way to do it. Backing up all native WordPress tables is the default. After you’ve decided about the tables, if you have any others, hit “Submit”.

D. Now the Rock Solid part. Grab yourself a copy of OPENRSM CloudBackup. It's the best backup to internet system we've tried. Setting it up for Windows, MAC, and Linux users is dead simple. Just make sure you have selected to backup your email folders. Then set the schedule (we backup daily).

E. That's all! Your WordPress SQL backups should be emailed to you and they'll be using the backup to internet features of CloudBackup to make sure you don't lose your site. Check the account and see the backups roll. You can now quit worrying and let the plugins, your email account, and CloudBackup do all the work. Just make sure to delete older backups from your email occasionally and your work is done.

And if your site crashes? Recovery is easy and fast, and your not suffering like the lost souls that were hosting their legitimate sites at McColo.