Schedule Backups for your WordPress Sites the Easy Way!
Backups are necessary with anything computer and software related. Your WordPress Site is no exception! You never know when an update, to either WordPress, or to a plugin will cause unexpected damage to your site. It may not happen, but you should be prepared if it does. It’s also a good idea to have automatic scheduled backups incase you get hasty in modifying your website. Usually when my site breaks its because I was in a hurry to, “just fix something really quick”.
I love having backups so that I can undo my hasty decisions. Having an automated backup is an excellent safety feature for your website. Let’s look at how to put your website backups on an automatic schedule!
“Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links, they cost you nothing extra, and give me a commission if you decide to buy the product. It’s like buying me a nice frosty beverage for sharing some cool tools with you :)”
The BackupBuddy plugin is my plugin of choice for backing up and running scheduled backups on all of my sites. It’s a very powerful plugin that super easy to use and easy to configure. After my theme its always the second thing that I install on every new site that I develop. BackupBuddy also makes it easy to move a WordPress Site from your development location to its live location or to move your site from one host to another.
BackupBuddy lets you create multiple backup schedules with different settings. I usually start off with two backup schedules.
The first schedule with with a longer interval between backups. This one is a Full and Complete backup. That means it is a perfect copy of your site that includes everything, images posts, comments, plugins… everything.
Then one more frequently which is a database back up. This backs up pretty much all of the written content on your site, it does a bit more then that, but that’s a good way of looking at it. So that’s your blog posts the written words not the images that you uploaded as well as the comments that people made on your site.
The decision on the frequency that you set your backup schedule, depends on how often you are making changes. If you are a blogger and are writing three posts a week you should probably do a full site backup once a week, and a database backup once a day. If it’s a company website and you aren’t adding new content that frequently I would suggest once a month for a full backup, and once a week for a database backup. The important thing is that with the BackupBuddy plugin you can set a backup schedule. That makes backing up your site be one less thing you need to worry about.
Now the JTAP (Just the Answer Please!) for How to Set Automatically Backup your WordPress site.
Step 1: Get The BackupBuddy Plugin and configure it!
Make your life easy and Get the BackUpBuddy plugin for WordPress. It’s a premium plugin, but it’s Awesome. One day it will save your site! Read my post on How to Backup Your WordPress Website with the Backup Buddy Plugin. Here is a link if you just want to download the BackupBuddy Plugin.
Step 2: Configure your backup schedule!
To get started with you backup go to the Dashboard of your WordPress site select BackupBuddy on the left then “Schedules”.
At the top of the schedules area it will ask you to give it a name. I like to make it descriptive so I will remember what it is doing. I’d put something like, “Monthly full backup.”
Then under “backup profile” select “Complete Backup (full)”
Time/Date of next Run: This will be the first time and day that your schedule will run. After that, it will run on the same day and time as your interval dictates. I usually set mine to run late Sunday night when I figure the least amount of traffic will be on my site. Running the backup won’t take your side off line, but it will use server resources which will slow your site down, so you want it to run when the fewest number of people are on your site.
Skip the remote destinations backup for now, lets just get a regular backup going first. Your backups will be saved under: wp-content folder under uploads/backupbuddy_backups.
Make sure that the “Enable schedule to run” box is checked.
Then push the “+ Add New Schedule” button
There you go your first backup scheduled!
Step 3: Rinse and Repeat
Follow the same procedure in step two but this time create a weekly database backup.
Step 4: Limit the number of backups saved.
In your Dashboard under BackupBuddy, select settings. Scroll down until you see “Local Archive Storage Limits” I like to use just the “Limit number of local backups to keep” setting.
I set mine to 7. Scroll down to the bottom and push the “Save General Settings” button. Now that that is saved you will have 7 months worth of complete backups and 7 weeks worth of database backups.
Step 5: Make sure you know if something isn’t working.
The last step is to just make sure that you have set your Error notification email. You want to be sure to know if something isn’t going right with your backups.
Under the same BackupBuddy Settings tab look for the “Email Notifications” Section. Then just verify that you have put your email address in the “Error Notification Recipient(s)” box.
I also like to know when my backups have been completed. This maybe too much information for some people, but if you want that piece of mind put your address in the “Scheduled backups completed recipient(s)” box. Then scroll down to the bottom of the settings page and push the “Save General Setting” Button
That’s it! Your website is now taking care of it’s own backups. Don’t you think that you should let BackupBuddy give you peace of mind the next time that some plugin or WordPress update doesn’t behave the way it’s supposed to? Make your life a little easier and get the BackupBuddy Plugin.
