WordPress Backup

If you run a WordPress powered website you probably know how important it is to backup your website database and files. If you don’t know that you need to be doing that please start!

There are lots of different methods to backup your WordPress database and files and I perform regular backups of my site and clients websites. Did you know that it us actually possible to backup your WordPress website straight to your Dropbox account?

Dropbox is a great tool that syncs files between computers. I still use it regularly to make sure I have the latest files on my laptop from my desktop. They offer 2gb of space for free, more than enough for storing the majority of WordPress users backups.

OnlineBackupDeals.com (note: I help them run their website) has this great post on how you can use a plugin or two and have your WordPress backup sent straight to your Dropbox account. While this method of backing up your WordPress website might not be for everyone it could be handy to occasionally have a copy of your website backup in your Dropbox account.

I tested a few of the plugins out that are mentioned and my favourite was BackWPup. It seemed to offer the most options as far as scheduling and what to backup. Not to mention it offered more choices of backup destinations that just Dropbox. So if you have an Amazon S3 account you could backup to there instead.

I did not spend a great deal of time testing the plugin for how many resources it used. If you have a large blog it could eat up a considerable number of resources. Just a word of caution if you are on shared hosting. If you use the BackWPup plugin what has been your experience regarding server resources? Have you had any problems?

You can never have enough backups so it might be worth trying out BackWPup. If you send your backup to your Dropbox account you would easily have access to it whereever you need it.