Sometimes there is a right way and a wrong way to do something. In this case, there are a lot of right ways to get your Stand-Alone WordPress blog backed up. I’m going to demo my system and you can use it if you have a similar set of parameters or just get a grasp on the tasks if you have a different set of circumstances.
The official core WordPress document written to help you with backups is one you should be familiar with. It’s on the official WordPress Codex and it’s located here: http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Backups
I’m running on a Unix host with a Plesk Dashboard / Control Panel.
- Make a copy of the local folder where you keep your WordPress blog. After I copy the entire folder / directory tree, I usually rename the old one to wordpress-blog.old and then I’ll make a brand new folder (empty) for the next step.
- Use FTP to copy the entire directory tree from your server / host down to your local folder. With the latest versions of WordPress allowing version updates and plugin updates to the server directly, you really have to make a fresh local copy of whatever you have currently on the server / host. In the past my master copy of a WordPress blog would be local, but since I use the automatic update feature constantly with updates to WP and plugins, the master is always on the host these days.
- Backup the database. Lots of ways to go about this. The first is to do it manually. You can go to your Plesk dashboard and then access the db via phpMyAdmin. There are a staggering number of possible combinations selecting the export manually, so I just use a WordPress Plugin. The one I have been using lately is called: WordPress Database Backup and it’s located at: http://ilfilosofo.com/blog/wp-db-backup/ This plugin allows you to set it for weekly backups to the server, to an email address, or a “Johnny On The Spot” backup to your local machine.
That theoretically covers the backup portion and you will find other references on the internet for the “3 step WordPress backup” in a number of places.
You will normally restore this backup to the original location if you have to but you can also use this backup to move your WordPress installation to an entirely new location. I’ll cover that in the next post.
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