Making Backup Sexy!

I am a geek. I know I am a geek. I revel in my geekiness. How do I know I am a geek? Because I get a thrill from geeky things like backing up. Maybe it is because I have had too many hard drives die early deaths and too many websites that have had to be restored from backups. Backups are not sexy, they are not thrilling, they are, for the most part boring, but they are an essential part of running a blog. When I find a tool that helps me to backup a blog I find it exciting and I want to tell other bloggers because I know it will help you. It will help you to keep a recent backup of your blog just in case the server your blog is on blows up and dies a horrible death, or the hackers find some way of getting in and destroying your beautiful blog. A recent backup will save you a huge amount of time and have you back to normal in no time in case of a disaster.

We all know that any kind of manual backup does not happen as often as it should. If your web host offers cPanel it is easy to backup your website. All you need to do is login into your web hosting control panel, browse to the backup page and click a couple of links and download your backup. When was the last time you did it? If you are like most bloggers it has probably been a little while since you backed up. Sure you could rely on your web host to backup your website, but have you read the terms of service for most web hosts? Most will not guarantee that the backups they make will be any good. What is the WordPress blogger to do?

The WordPress database backup plugin comes to the rescue. This plugin makes it easy to backup your core WordPress database tables as well as extra tables you want to backup. Installation is simple. Once you download the plugin you will need to upload the wp-db-backup.php file to your plugins folder. Once the file has been uploaded login into your WordPress admin panel and goto the plugins tab. Look for the WordPress Database Backup listing and activate it. After it is activated you can configure it under Manage->Backup.

When you goto manage the plugin you can choose to include the extra tables in your WordPress database and do a backup manually. Better than doing a manual backup, is the option to have the plugin do a scheduled backup and have it emailed right to you. You can schedule it for once hourly, daily or weekly depending on how often you update your blog. Most blogs would probably be good with either a daily or weekly backup.

If you want a very easy way to backup your WordPress blog, install the WordPress database backup plugin. It makes your WordPress database backup a snap and could help you recover from a disaster quickly.

photo by: JackVersloot