Blog Series – From Setup To ? – Part 5 – Backing Up WordPress

It’s been over 2 months since I’ve wrote any posts for the blog series and honestly, this might be the last one. There is tons of info online laid out beautifully on how to do stuff with WordPress, so to avoid re-inventing the wheel I will likely stop with this post.

I just wanted to write up this quick post about how to backup your WP database (and some other important files). It’s not necessary to backup the entire WP installation because those files can be easily downloaded from WordPress.org if need be. I always just backup any files that I have modified or customized and any other files that I created. The WP installation files collectively are too big just to back them up for the heck of it.

Back when I used to develop web sites I would always have the most recent copy of the site on my computer so I always had a backup. Plus the database was a stand alone file so there was no exporting necessary. Now with WP, because it uses MySQL, the DB has to be exported and the development files aren’t on my local machine. There is an easy and automated way to back up the DB. The rest of the files don’t really need to be backed up too often. (But it really depends how often you make changes and how reliable the backup that your web hosting provider offers. I don’t rely on my web host at all for backups.)

For my installations…I usually just backup the folder that contains all my encrypted affiliate redirect files, the images folder (or wp uploads if you use that), my customized .htaccess and robots.txt files, and the plugins and themes folder.

Automatic WordPress DB Backup Direct to Email

I started using a plugin for backing up my WordPress DB. You can backup anytime you want manually and download the export file or have it compressed and emailed to you. I just set it up to automatically email me a copy once a week (you can change the schedule to never, hourly or daily). When the new one comes in, I delete the old one. Anytime a new plugin is installed and creates tables in the DB, you can go back into Manage > Backup to add the new tables so they will be backed up as well.

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