2 Quick Ways to Backup Your WordPress Blog

After recently helping a client back up their WordPress blog, we thought we would provide a short post on “Why and How Should I Backup my WordPress Blog?”

Frequent backups of your WordPress blog/website are integral to the long-term survival of your online presence. In an instant, your database could crash, you could accidentally remove tables or delete files from your server, or any number of things could go wrong resulting in a loss of data.

Here are three options for backing up your WordPress database, along with the pros and cons of each:

1. The Built-In WordPress Export Feature

This is certainly the easiest way to back up your blog as no plugin is needed.

Use if … you just want quick and easy backups of your Posts and Pages.

How to Use: In the WordPress Dashbaord, it can be found under the Manage > Export menu. Just choose the author(s) whose posts you want to export, and download the export file. The file can be imported later using the form under the Manage > Import menu.

Pros:

• Quick and easy backup of your Posts and Pages only
• Comes with the default install of WordPress; no extra plugins or files needed
• Very intuitive interface that can be easily used by anyone

Cons:

• Limited to backing up users, posts, comments, and categories
• It doesn’t backup links (Blogroll), passwords, IDs (post/category/comment)
• No scheduled backups
• 64MB upload limit for importing backups
• Extra tables created by plugins will be lost
• No option to email you the backup file

Suggested frequency: Every month or so, depending on the number of Posts and Pages you have.

2. WordPress Database Backup Plugin

This plugin allows you to backup the entire database for your WordPress installation.

Use if … you want a complete backup of everything to do with your WordPress installation, like users accounts, passwords, etc.

How to Use: Download the plugin, upload and activate it. The menu can be found under Manage > Backup. It will automatically backup all the default WordPress tables, but if you have extra tables in your database, choose them to be backed up as well. Then choose the method by which you want your backup file delivered, and click “Backup!”. You can also choose to have the backups made on an hourly, daily, or weekly schedule. Choose your preference and enter your email address, then choose the extra tables you want backed up and submit. It will tell you when the next backup is due.

Pros:

• Backup your entire database.
• Backup non-default tables, like those created by plugins
• Backup file can be emailed to you
• Scheduled backups

Cons:

• No restore function from within WordPress, meaning you must restore manually using a program like PHPMyAdmin
• A little more setup time than the built-in export feature of WordPress
• A plugin must be installed
• Higher learning curve all-around

Suggested frequency: 3-6 months or more often depending on traffic and the blog’s importance. And if you don’t want to remember to do it, just use the Scheduling feature included with the plugin!

Advanced Third Option: Manual Database Backup

Although the first two options are the quick and easy way to do WordPress backups, it’s worth mentioning a third option of doing a manual database backup. If you are familiar with programs like PHPMyAdmin, then you may find this to be a reasonable third option for backing up your database. Although, it is a third option, we’d only suggest this for advanced WP and PHP users. It’s much easier to use the WordPress Database Backup plugin or the Export feature.