Keeping your custom WordPress site backed up is a crucial item. The last thing we ever want to happen is to have our site crash or get hacked and we have no backup in place of the content. Unfortunately, every day someone has this happen to them. I shared the other day about the importance of keeping your custom WordPress site up to date, and one of the things I mentioned there was to backup before you begin the process.
In the comments it was asked by one of the readers to do a video discussing how you can backup your WordPress site. So, here is how I handle mine. I run a plugin called WordPress Database Backup or WP-DB Backup for short. This plugin can be set to automatically back up your site each day and email you a copy. When I originally set mine up, I had it going to my main inbox for all of my WordPress Sites. But, since I currently have about 10 different sites I run for various things, it was clogging my inbox quickly!
So, I then set up a dummy email account on my server to which my backups for all of my sites are sent daily. I never open this inbox except to delete the copies that are a few months old when it fills up. Since it is connected to a Google account it takes a while to fill it up. But now I never have to worry about losing any of my sites. Here is a quick tutorial showing you how to set up the WordPress Database Backup:
I like setting up a gmail acct for backups – smart!
I did this long ago and it was one of the greatest things.
Thanks for the post Jeremy. Do you know if it will backup my custom theme settings?
On some themes it will pull parts of the customizations with it as well.
Thanks for the encouragement, Jeremy. Ive put a lot of time and effort in to getting my site setup and I would be crushed to lose all that work.
Glad it helps Erik!
How do you restore it?
Probably the easiest is going to be using a plugin like this: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-dbmanager/screenshots/