Tips For Backing Up Your WordPress Website

Josh Erickson
May 1, 2012

Worried about your site going down, a development flaw that takes a bite out of your layout, or worse? It happens. Sites go down, files get misplaced or rewritten, employees make one too many tweaks. Put your mind to rest with a great backup system for your website.

The best backup system for our WordPress sites is a plugin called, “Automatic WordPress Backup“. It is a good model for which all site backup plans should follow. We love this plugin/system and here are several reasons why:

  • Easy to setup and configure.
  • Backs up the Content Management System (WordPress) database and all the necessary files (to an Amazon S3 account).
  • Scheduled backups.
  • Easy restoration option if your site has a problem.
  • Backs up to a different server than the one we use for development and live sites (which we consider a bonus).
  • Costs only a few dollars each month.

As a side note, always make sure you periodically test your backup system to ensure your files are truly being backed up.

We have only one caution for the Automatic WordPress Backup plugin. If your site has constant updates or site visitors that rank in the ten of thousands, then this plugin may be missing one needed feature: no option to do scheduled backups more than once a day. We would really like to see this updated in the future. However, the plugin is free, a pleasure to use and a delight to many of our clients.

Most website backup plans would benefit greatly from a system like the Automatic WordPress Backup plugin. We provide a backup system for all our clients and talk to them about it in the early phase of sales. This builds client trust as we assure and address each concern, even ones they might face once the project has been completed and we have moved on to other projects.

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