A Freelancer’s Guide to Choosing the Right WordPress Backup

What are the elements of a good backup system that freelancers can rely on? As a freelance web developer since 1995, I offer these five musts of a good backup system. 1. A good backup is complete. Believe it or not, there are quite a few backup plugins for WordPress that only back up the WordPress database.

What are the elements of a good backup system that freelancers can rely on? As a freelance web developer since 1995, I offer these five musts of a good backup system. 8

1. A good backup is complete.

Believe it or not, there are quite a few backup plugins for WordPress that only back up the WordPress database. That means, basically, they back up just the words of your web site and nothing else. That’s like homeowners insurance that covers what’s inside your house, but not the house itself. A good backup solution should save my database, files, uploads, settings, widgets, themes… everything. I want everything backed up.

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2. A good backup is automatic.

A good backup needs to happen like clockwork. It needs to be like a heartbeat. It happens without me telling it to. If the backup is relying on me to log in and press a button, or if I have to stop my work to make it happen, that backup is never going to be made. After I’ve set it up, a good backup happens without me having to think about it again. reliable

3. A good backup is reliable.

The backup I want is like that friendly old dog that most of us had around the neighborhood when we were growing up. It was always around and got along with everybody. Server compatibility is a real issue with most WordPress backup plugins. A good solution needs to be compatible with a wide variety of web hosts. It needs to be regularly updated so it stays compatible with the newest versions of WordPress and the newest trends in web hosting. And if you have a problem, there should be a responsive support mechanism that puts you in contact with the developers. 11

4. A good backup is portable.

Zipping up all your files and storing them on your web server is great… as long as the server is up (or, as long as you remember to FTP in and download the zips once and a while). I know myself well enough to know that a good backup, at least for me, needs to push those backups offsite as part of the backup process. A good backup solution will do this automatically and offer lots of options on where the backup archives can be stored. 12

5. A good backup is simple.

A backup is no good if it’s too complicated to set up, or so confusing that you’re not sure if you’ve set it up correctly. I don’t want to fiddle with setting up cron jobs on the server or FTPing something somewhere, or chmodding anything at all. And when the day finally comes when you have to restore a broken site, the restore process should be easy and wizard-driven. If the restore process involves phpMyAdmin, I’m not interested. Make it easy, please.

Why Choose BackupBuddy?

For all of these reasons, BackupBuddy is an excellent solution for freelance web developers. It offers a complete backup of your site: the database, files, uploads, settings, themes. Everthing. BackupBuddy backups happen automatically. It’s easy to set up and schedule. Set it and forget it. BackupBuddy is reliable. It offers broad compatibility with most web hosts. And it’s supported by a stellar technical support team that stays on top of the trends in web hosting. BackupBuddy also offers a wide variety of external storage solutions, ranging from S3 and Rackspace to Dropbox and iThemes’ own Stash storage system. And, for all its power, BackupBuddy is one of the simplest to use backup solutions available in the WordPress world. Its backup, restore, and migration wizards make BackupBuddy very easy to use. bb-freelancers150
Stay tuned for more BackupBuddy for Freelancers posts this week, May 13–17. We’ll be sharing more tips for client work and speeding up your WordPress development workflow with BackupBuddy.

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