I have talked about the importances of regularly backing up your blog. This is especially true if your blog makes money. Every blogger should have some kind of backup system in place in case disaster strikes. However, most backup plugins for WordPress only backs up the database. While the db is the most important part of the blog, there are other parts of the blog that should be backed up as well. If the only thing you have backed up is the database, then that’s the only thing you can restore. Elements like themes, plugins, uploaded image files and settings files could all be lost. Here’s how to automatically backup your entire WordPress blog.
Automatic WordPress Backup Plugin
Automatic WordPress Backup is the ultimate backup tool for WordPress. The plugin will back up your entire WordPress site and not just the database. Backups are stored on Amazon S3 for maximum flexibility and reliability. Other features include:
- Captures your ENTIRE site (WordPress database, themes, plugins, uploaded files and settings files), which means minimal downtime if you need to restore.
- Totally automated backup means you spend more time getting stuff done and less time fighting your tools.
- Minimal configuration. Set it and forget it.
- Manually trigger backups so you can have some peace of mind before you install a new plugin or a WordPress update.
Automatic WordPress Backup is extremely easy to set up and used. Once you’ve selected all the options you want, there’s really nothing else to do. I have the plugin set to back up my entire blog everyday and to keep the backup for a month.
Store Backups on Amazon S3
The Automatic WordPress Backup Plugin is free. However, you will have to pay for Amazon S3 storage. This shouldn’t be much of a problem with most bloggers since S3 is so inexpensive. It cost 15 cents to store 1GB of data and 15 cents per GB of data transfer (Free until June 30th, 2010). A backup of my blog takes up 250MB of space. Storing 30 copies (1 month worth) would cost $1.12 and transferring to S3 would cost another $1.12 (Free right now). For $1.12 a month ($2.24 a month after June 30), I have a daily backup of my entire blog that I can access if anything happens. Considering how much money the blog makes, this offers incredible piece of mind.
The average blog is not 250MB in size. The main reason my blog is so big is because I used to store all my images on it. Now, I store my images on Flickr and pull it from there. My blog database only takes up 40MB. I would imagine it shouldn’t cost more than a dollar per month to back up an average blog with Automatic WordPress Backup and Amazon S3. A big hat tip to Carl Nelson for turning me onto this plugin.
Automatic WordPress Backup | Amazon S3 Simple Storage Service