How to Back up WordPress Automatically

 

How to backup WordPress

(Read on for the fun.) For the millionth time, cause I love you THAT much. Or because… you know… you aren’t doing it, here is how to backup your WordPress, easy-peasy.

This plugin has worked for ALL the blogs that we’ve tried it within. From a few thousand visitors to a few million – it works. The ONLY exception is when you are on managed hosting and have restrictions in place.

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Step One: Download a Plugin – UpdraftPlus

(Fun yet? No? Keep reading.) To do that, log into your dashboard – navigate to Plugins tab. Go to Add New. In the searchbox, type “updraft”. Find this one:

Then click “install now”. When it is done installing, the Install button will change to Activate. Click it!

Step Two: Make a Backup of Your WordPress Site

This is much easier than you’ve experienced in the past, if you’ve ever tried it! You simply navigate to Settings -> UpdraftPlus Backups. And you’ll see this:

It really is that easy. Click “Backup”. And watch the little wheel spin until it is done – voila!

Step Three: Set Your WordPress Backups on Autopilot

K. Here we go. The bottom line is the only fun way to backup your site is to NOT backup your site. Eat Strawberry Orange Mint Salad instead. Before you do that – set up your UpdraftPlus backups in this schedule, and to an offsite location like DropBox.

To calculate your optimum backup schedule for the database, you need to know how much work goes into your site every day. This includes drafts, notes, new posts, pages or sales if you have e-commerce. If there is activity on your site daily, then I recommend a daily backup.

For files – those are just the images and plugins and themes. They are usually a HUGE component of the backup and for daily blogs, I recommend a backup once a week. If you blog once a week, you can get away with a file backup every 2 – 4 weeks.

1. Change to “Weekly” and keep 3 backups.
2. Change to “Daily” and keep 7 backups (a week’s worth).
3. Connect to a service to store the backups. NEVER leave it at default – which will store it on your own server which is almost as bad as not having a backup at all.
4. Select whether or not you wish to receive an email summary on every backup.
5. Don’t forget to save your settings.

The other settings are for advanced users and you can find documentation to read up in the plugin.

That my friends is the easiest and most reliable way I’ve found to backup your WordPress site. And the only way to have fun is to put it on autopilot and do something else.