Questions?

How does Stash Live work?

Stash Live is a new way to backup your site with BackupBuddy. It actively tracks real-time changes of your WordPress website and then immediately pushes them up for safe storage. Stash Live periodically takes a Snapshot of your site in time, which is a recording of your site at that very moment. Your Backups are stored as downloadable zip files in BackupBuddy Stash, our secure, off-site storage destination, that you can access anytime from the iThemes Sync dashboard.

How is Stash Live different from a traditional BackupBuddy backup?

BackupBuddy Stash Live has several benefits over “traditional” backups:

• Stash Live continuously backs up your database changes such as new or modified posts, comments, meta data, settings, and more.
• Stash Live watches when files change, such as adding new media, new plugin files, new theme files, plugin deletions and theme deletions.
• Stash Live can handle large sites on poor-quality, shared hosting, whereas “traditional” BackupBuddy relies heavily on your own server to run backups. Stash Live offloads the "heavy-lifting" of backups from your server to our service so backups run more reliably.
• Stash Live backups are automatically and securely transferred and encrypted to your BackupBuddy Stash account.

How is Stash Live different than a traditional scheduled BackupBuddy backup?

With scheduled backups in BackupBuddy, there are gaps of time between backups, where your backups can become out of date. BackupBuddy Live continuously watches for changes to posts, pages, media, plugins, themes, and more and immediately pushes them up for safe storage.

What gets backed up?

Stash Live backs up everything in your WordPress installation, including your site's database, media library, plugins, themes, comments, plus any other non-WordPress files or directories.

What does Stash Live cost?

Stash Live is included for FREE for all current BackupBuddy customers with an active iThemes account, beginning in BackupBuddy version 7.0. You also get 1GB of FREE BackupBuddy Stash storage space with your BackupBuddy purchase to start using Stash Live. (1GB is usually enough to store 6 backups of the average WordPress site (150MB).) If you need more Stash space beyond the 1GB of free space, you can upgrade your Stash storage plan here.

How do I start using Stash Live?

To get started using Stash Live, you need two things: 1) a current BackupBuddy membership and 2) your iThemes username and password. For more details on how to set up Stash Live, check out this tutorial on How to Set Up Stash Live.

What’s a Snapshot?

Stash Live continuously watches for changes and pushes them up for safe storage. Periodically a "Snapshot" in time is created which is a recording of the state of your site at that time. Snapshots allow you to restore your site to the state it was in at the time the Snapshot was created. Snapshots are fully BackupBuddy-compliant zip files which can be used just like any other BackupBuddy backup for things like restoring with ImportBuddy, database rollbacks, file restoration, etc.

What are the Theme and Plugin Snapshots? What do I do with them?

For your convenience, we include separate zip files for your themes and plugins with each Stash Live Snapshot. Theme and Plugin Snapshots contain the contents of your WordPress Themes and Plugins directories respectively. These allow you to easily access your theme and plugin files without having to wade through a larger backup file.

Where are Stash Live Snapshots (i.e. my backups) stored?

Snapshots are stored in your BackupBuddy Stash account which can be accessed from iThemes Sync.

How do I download my backup files made with Stash Live?

There are 3 different ways to download your Snapshots (i.e. your backup files):

1. You Snapshots are automatically stored in your BackupBuddy Stash account, which can be accessed from the iThemes Sync dashboard. By storing your backups off-site in BackupBuddy Stash, Stash live ensures you don't lose access to your backup files if your site ever goes down.
2. You can also download your Stash Live Snapshots from within your WordPress dashboard on the BackupBuddy > Stash Live page in the Stash Live Remote Snapshot Files section.
3. Your Snapshot downloads are also available for 24 hours after each Snapshot run from the Snapshot notification emails sent from BackupBuddy.

My first Snapshot is taking a while. Is this normal?

Your first Stash Live Snapshot will most likely take more time than a "traditional" BackupBuddy backup to complete. This is totally normal. For the average WordPress site (150MB), the initial Stash Live Snapshot should complete within 10 - 15 minutes, but this process may take longer (possibly several hours) for larger sites. Keep in mind that after the first Snapshot completes, all subsequent Snapshots will complete much more quickly (and more like "traditional" BackupBuddy backups).

Do Snapshots count against my Stash storage space?

Yes, Snapshots stored in your Stash storage count against your Stash space quota. If you'd like to upgrade your Stash storage plan from the 1GB you get for free with your BackupBuddy purchase, you can upgrade your Stash plan here.  If you run out of Stash storage space, you can still create Snapshots, but they will only be available for 24 hours from the Stash Live page inside of your WordPress dashboard, or from the latest email notification (provided you haven’t turned email notifications off).

What happens if I run out of Stash storage space?

If you run out of Stash storage space, you can still create Snapshots, but they will only be available for 24 hours from the Stash Live page inside of your WordPress dashboard, or from the latest Snapshot email notification. If you need to upgrade your Stash storage plan to better suit your site's needs, you can upgrade your Stash plan here.

Is BackupBuddy Stash Live secure?

Yes. All data is transferred over an SSL-encrypted connection. All data stored is encrypted with industry standard AES-256 encryption, the same level of security required by the U.S. government for classified documents. 

What is the Cron-Kicker service?

PHP scripts running on web hosts cannot run themselves. They make use of being triggered by a site visitor (such as yourself or your readers) to launch various processes. A site with few visitors may result in things not getting run as much as expected or 'pausing' between steps until someone comes along. The Cron-kicker service lets the BackupBuddy Live servers periodically access the site, helping to 'kick' things along.

Does BackupBuddy Stash Live work for local development sites?

Yes. However, because local development sites are not internet-accessible, our Cron-Kicker cannot "push" the backup process along. To keep Stash Live backing up your site, you will either need to access your local site or have the "Stash Live" page open, especially for the initial backup which can take a while.

What is the minimum PHP version required for Stash Live?

The minimum PHP version required to run BackupBuddy Stash Live is 5.3 or higher.

Does Stash Live work with Multisite?

Yes. Stash Live will backup the entire Network, including all sub-sites. Just note that it isn't possible to backup sub-sites individually. Also note that restorations are only possible to the same URL, and it is not possible to migrate a network to a new URL.

Will Stash Live work with Dropbox or Amazon S3?

No. Stash Live is a unique service designed to work with BackupBuddy, BackupBuddy Stash and iThemes Sync. You can continue using Dropbox or Amazon S3 with "traditional" BackupBuddy backups.

Can I access my backup files if I can't access my site?

Yes. You can download your Snapshot backup files any time from the iThemes Sync dashboard. Just sign in with your iThemes membership username and password. If you want to take advantage of all of Sync's features for managing multiple WordPress sites, we recommend following the Sync quick setup guide to add your sites to Sync (and you can manage 10 for free!)