Puzzling out how to back up wordpress correctly can make you want to pull your hair out! A lot of tutorials, and even instructions from some “leading” blogging trainers, are incomplete in their information. Fortunately, this video takes you through an easy step by step process to get all of your wordpress data backed up so that you can upgrade or migrate hosts safely.
(Video is in high resolution, so can be viewed in 720p and full screen if desired using the controls above)
Two Notes: Sometimes the WordPress Backup by BTE causes a “White Screen” error, troubleshooting for that is here (it wont cause data loss, don’t panic). Second I have a post coming on how to fix the little red memo about not having an htaccess file. Its safe to go ahead and back up, but adding an htaccess file to the WordPress Backup by BTE folder will improve your security. Look for that post soon.
Learning how to correctly back up your wordpress blog can help limit the damage done by any number of accidents! Whether you are planning an upgrade, changing a bunch of plugins, preventing a mistake by your hosting company or limiting the damage of a wordpress virus/attack a good backup of your wordpress blog is critical to your business!
I hope you enjoyed this training! This is one of many wordpress, social media and marketing/branding gems available to students of my Speed 2 Trust: WordPress & Social Media class. My class is due to launch again soon so be sure to be on the lookout for the announcement or contact me to find out how you can join us now and stay for life!
Hopefully this video has helped you learn how to correctly backup wordpress! I know it can be a little intimidating so feel free to leave your questions, thoughts or even experiences with these particular plugins! If your a PBY student, perhaps you can also share with the community what you’re experiences have been with the class in general. If you think this information might help someone you know, please share it with others via tweets, Facebook, Diggs or other social media!
Kimberly
PS: If you’ve got questions just leave them below and I’ll answer them as soon as possible!
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{ 45 comments… read them below or add one }
Kimberly,
I love it. You saved my blog awhile back from a disastrous attempt at an upgrade. I know this is something you’ve been dilligently working on. Congratulations, it looks like it now coming together nicely.
I appreciate what you do. Keep me posted on the developments.
.-= Don Enck´s last blog ..The iPad…Is This The Future Of Computer Technology? =-.
Kim,
You never cease to amaze me with the content that you provide. You are a TRUE Go-Giver. This will save a lot of people a lot of headaches.
Bill
.-= Bill Hartman´s last blog ..Day 25 – Make or Break your Online Success =-.
Kim,
This is perhaps one of the most important, yet most frequently overlooked aspects of being a blog owner. Backing up information is a VIP (very important process). Thanks for sharing your expertise with the blogging world.
Krista
Kim,
I am so thankful that you are sharing this info! I am going to back mine up as soon as I finish this. Thanks for keeping us informed of the essentials to running our websites. Val
.-= Val Wilcox´s last blog ..Which Bridge in Life to Use… =-.
Thanks for sharing this Kimberly. I can install and activate, but always struggle with the settings. But now I have 2 questions.
1. For some reason, I don’t have a Plugin directory link on top, but it is telling me a plugin folder exists for the wordpress backup. Is there something else I need to configure?
2. When I tick the selections for extra tables, the selections are not saved. Will these be included in the wp-backup? There is no save button.
I went through your video again, but didn’t see anything.
You will save a lot of stress for a lot of bloggers! Thanks again Kimberly!
Michelle
Michelle
.-= Michelle Shutter´s last blog ..Personal Branding With My Story Marketing =-.
Hi Kim, Great information as always. This is really important for anyone with a blog thanks for putting this awesome stuff out there for those of us that need a better understanding!
~Kara
.-= Kara Grabenhorst´s last blog ..Don’t like it? Change it NOW =-.
Kim, That was really cool
I just started backing up my blog a little while ago but I was only doing the first plug in. I am so glad that i read this and I am totally going to be sharing it.
Thanks
Steve
.-= Steven Downward´s last blog ..Automating Facebook With Selective Tweets =-.
I really have to give you a big plug on this one. I read it but didn’t act on it. Than I lost a file. NOW I have backed up and scheduled daily backups.
Thank You
Bill
THANKS KIM! I just did everything you said to do so I hope I am safe. I appreciate this so much!
Beverly
.-= Beverly Monical´s last blog ..Ever Heard Of The Boiling Frog Phenomenon? =-.
Kim, you did it again. I was able to follow along perfectly. I too saw that it didn’t hold my check marks in the top part. Is that ok?
Thank you for your wonderful sharing and caring,
Sandy
.-= Sandy & Al Abrams´s last blog ..Horror Show or Natural Event??? =-.
Yes, the top section will refresh after you’ve downloaded the copy to your desktop. The only checkboxes that “stay” are the ones in the bottom with scheduling. You got it!
Done, This was extremely useful to me and simple as pie. Your instructions are precise and to the point.
Thanks for sharing and possibly saving my blog in the process.
.-= Jose H. Caraballo´s last blog ..The Biggest Problems with Credit Counseling Agencies (Part 2) =-.
Hi Kimberly, I just went thru with the backup’s of my blogs thanks to your step by step guide on how to. Thank you so much, you take all the scaryness away
Stay well & happy
Toni
.-= Toni King@EFT´s last blog ..Taking Time Out. =-.
Thank you so much Kim. I have wondered if I was covered with just the Wordpress Database Backup. I am so glad to know that I wasn’t and for the easy steps to fill in the holes! You are amazing!
.-= Melissa Wright´s last blog ..16 Great Plugins You Need to Have on Your Blog =-.
Kim, I got this through Toni King. Thank you so muchos!
.-= Tone Floreal´s last blog ..I.D. please, in DC =-.
Hey Tone, thanks for stopping by. Glad you found it useful!
Hmmmm,
I don’t use plugins to do this work, I just wrote a few scripts for this purpose. A script that calls mysqldump and one that tars & compresses the wordpress folder (and any other ones I am concerned about). Furthermore, on my server at home, I have a nightly script that FTP gets the files and deletes all but the most current five sets of backup files.
My approach is somewhat ham-handed, as I just backup the entire database rather than selecting tables & particular types of records and I tar up, compress, and FTP all the files even though those are relatively static.
I had two events with sites that taught me this. One was a site was crack (in my days b4 wordpress I used another CMS), my recollection was they did not damage my data just mangled the files and rewrote their own index.html file. The other time, the hosting service had a crash and their backups missed my most important site (though other sites were brought up okay via their backups), of course I griped to them about it, but they told me they felt no responsibility for any backups beyond basic system and account info and content backup was up to the individual website owners/masters.
I also use the backups to replicate sites for testing and development sites (though one has to do some file editing) and as you point out, such files can be used to quickly transfer a site.
.-= The Wisconsin Skier´s last blog ..May Snow =-.
I can definitely understand the need for a more sophisticated solution. However, many of my visitors are not nearly that technically inclined. I’m aiming for solutions they can implement that cover at least most of the bases without making them say screw it and failing to back up. There is a fine line for the novice when it comes to these things. I would rather they had a partial backup (which yes is what is created here) than none at all which is what most have.
I think your approach is rock solid and is a very dependable solution. I would love to see those scripts!
Kimberly
Aloha Kimberly,
Thank you so much for writing this incredible article with such step-by-step instructions! I love how you have the video for all of us to follow along. I so appreciate your kindness and patience to help all of us who are not as technically inclined.
You are such a gift to the world. Thank you Kim!
Hugs of love & gratitude,
Kellie
.-= Kellie Hosaka@home based business´s last blog ..What Is “Spiritual Awakening” & How Does It Relate To My Business? – pt. 2 =-.
Done & Dusted! Thanks Kim! Your a rock star!
O.K. Kimberly, you have sent another gem to us. This was one of my “post-its” as to how to back up my blog. You have answered very easily. Blessing to you my friend because you are the Best! I’m not one for techy stuff, but you always make it understandable for me.
You never cease to amaze me with the content that you provide. You are a TRUE Go-Giver. This will save a lot of people a lot of headaches.
Hi Kim, Great information as always. This is really important for anyone with a blog thanks for putting this awesome stuff out there for those of us that need a better understanding!
All seems to work well, but I was directed to install an .htaccess file in the BTE-WP directory with this content:
order allow,deny
deny from all
The Plug-In referred me to http://www.blogtrafficexchange.com/wordpress-backup/
Is all this ok?
Is this ok?
Hey Brian, its all alright. You can decide whether or not you want to put a htaccess file in that folder it recommends. Its recommended you do because depending on your hosting settings your backup folder may be visible to the (nosey) “public”. What this would mean is that they could get their hands on passwords, see which vulnerable plugins your using, and several other things. Its just a little bitty file named .htaccess with those two lines in it. FTP it up or use your cpanels file manager. Some folks don’t bother with it though. It really depends on whats on your blog, what your doing and how good your host is about privacy.
Kimberly
Hi Kim.
Unsure if this is related to the 2 plugin I just installed, along with with that .htaccess file I referenced in my earlier post, but today my web-site was giving me:
Error 500 – Internal server error
An internal server error has occured!
Please try again later.
My provider told me to install another .htaccess (this time in the root folder) that has a single line:
AddType x-mapp-php5 .php
I can’t help but think that the Error 500 was either related to the backup plug-ins and/or the .htaccess I installed earlier. My provider was not able to offer a coherent explanation (at least not one that I could understand) as to why I needed this 2nd .htaccess file.
Can you shed any light? And, do these .htaccess files create any risk/exposure for my site?
Thanks,
Brian
Brian, is your host 1and1? They’re one I know requiring that. Its basically mapping some things to php 5 because they as a company are still using php 4 as default for apache (their web server).
Any host using php4 as default is very soon to have wordpress issues, see here: http://wordpress.org/news/2010/07/eol-for-php4-and-mysql4/ I would suggest running the health checking on that host.
Generally .htaccess files have a bunch of “deny” statements and actually protect us. (The one the plugin asks us to use makes us safer) This one from your host is simply giving php a directive. As long as we are not putting a bunch of “allow” lines in an htaccess file, generally speaking htaccess files make us safer. In your case, this one isnt really about safe or unsafe but about a host still not getting with the times.
You can read a little more about this here if you like: http://drupal.org/node/232773 Drupal is another open source, php based CMS software.
Hope this helps!
Kimberly
Indeed it is 1 and 1. Generally I’ve been happy with them. Even with this situation they were able to diagose and resolve in just a few minutes. Although, I’m still clueless as to why the absence of this file suddenly became a problem.
OK, so you know how the cobbler’s kids never have decent shoes? I was doing a favor for Sandhan, who asked me to take care of her blog backups and realized I hadn’t done it for my blog yet either (and didn’t know how…..). She directed me to this post. Great stuff, simple, straightforward, and in your usual manner – incredibly helpful.
You’re the best Kim (but we already knew that!) Blessings,
Kath
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My misfortune, could not watch the video due to the problem in internet connection speed. I’ll try some other time.
It would be nice to drop some textual summary too that would help in situations like this when there is problem in watching online video. Anyway, good work Kimberly and will discuss more after the video.
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Thanks, Kim – for sharing this helpful and important information! I just switched web hosts so know how important it is to have all my files and databases backed up.
I already used one of the backup plugins that you recommend – but did not usually check all the boxes or email it to myself in addition to my hard drive downloads before updates. Because of you, now I do. Also because of you, I added the other backup plugin – and see that I need to add a few files to some of my blog sites for them to be complete. I greatly appreciate your explaining why and how to backup my blogs – and look forward to reading more of yours.
Oren Pardes invites you to read…The Light of Freedom
So EASY to understand1 Thanks, Kim
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You’re welcome! Sounds like you got it going with no trouble. Let me know if you can’t come up with a theme solution and I’ll guide you with some ideas. You know how to reach me! Have a great start to the week!
Kimberly
Hi and thnax for the help.
I’m new to this and have a GoDaddy Windows ccount. The DB backup worked fine, however I had a ton of red writing when I went to backup the WP files. After creating folders and adding .htaccess files, setting permissions, I still had a lot of red ink on the page.
The solution for me was to carefully read the errors and realize that the pathways were missing and-or / in the paths. Strangely it didn’t seem to matter which I used (I tried them different ways). But once I got the slashes in the path the plug-in started working – but I had to rerun it a couple of times to get all 3 files backed up.
Thanx again for your time and info.
Nicely done Kim…easy to understand, Thank you!!
Alice McCarthy
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Kim,
Thanks for the awesome post on backing up your wordpress blog. I had a few plugins on my site for this, and needed a refresher. Your info is great!
Andy
Great post, Kim! Your video was clear and very understandable — and I have now installed the two backups and downloaded most of what I’m supposed to. It won’t let me do the images, but I’m wondering if that’s because I have not uploaded any images to begin with. I also need to catch your post on how to fix the “htaccess” thing. Thanks for informing and steering me through this!
This post will definitely help protect many people, as there are many who don’t backup their Wordpress blog – until it is too late.
I backup my files on a weekly basis, and my database on a nightly basis. I then send them both to an e-mail account that is unrelated to my blog. I’m thinking about switching hosts in the next few months, so my backup will come in handy.
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I’ve been playing around with backup plugins trying to decide which is best to use, so this post is very timely and helpful. I think it is so important for people to learn this. I don’t know how many people out there don’t bother with back ups and that is a huge mistake … especially if your WordPress Blog is the hub for your business.
Thanks for showing the correct way to back up!
Wendy
Hi Kimberly,
as I said in a comment on your other post, your article has helped me to feel confident about daring to finally upgrade to the latest version.
Yes, it was nerve wrecking but I got through it.
Thanks a million for you information!
Cheers
Yorinda
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Hi Kimberly,
This was just THE best informational video for preparing my blog for upgrading. I was so glad to have access to this perfect tutorial and quite proud that I successfully upgraded without any issues. Thanks for your very complete guidance for WordPress backup and managing Plugin/Widgets. I couldn’t have done the job so comfortably without this info. Thanks so much. Loren
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Hi Kimberly,
Thanks again. I had both back up plugins installed on my blog from your SEO classes, but the settings were not correct. All is good now. I like the feeling of security knowing that my blog is backed up since I’m planning to update. Very helpful and direct tutorial. Thanks!
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Hey Kim,
I was on your call two weeks ago and finally got to look into what I need to do in order to back up my blog and site. I was looking into Backup Buddy and couldn’t find a free version. I found this blog of yours and learned what to do through the tutorial, yet I see that you posted this on April of 2010.
My questions to you:
1. Is this still an option that you suggest to go with?
2. At this time I am choosing not to put money into back up, but I can put time, so I’ll go with that for now. So I was thinking to take each of my pages and copy the htmls to text docs where I have everything saved on a drive (or two). I know that it may be alot of work, but I feel that I am shooting in the dark. What I am learning is not relevant “2 days” later, and I rather do other things than put my time into figuring out how to have my sites going safely.
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Thanks.
Sigal.
Hey Sigal, sorry I didn’t see this originally. I’m still supposed to be out of the office till Monday but obviously I just can’t stay away!
Looks like we had a little miscommunication. This post covers the free method. BackupBuddy is the premium method. This is what you want to use, with both “WP-DB-Backup” and “WordPress Backup by BTE” to back stuff up if you are going the free route. The first one backs up your database, the second gets your images/plugins/current theme so together they make a useful pair for most sites. If you’re a little nervous of this free solution being “good enough” you could also do a quick export too which would only take you about another 5 minutes and then you’d have everything. There is NO sense in doing a hand copy-paste of every post when we have tools like this available
Kim
Million thanks. I’ll do that. Do you have a blog post talking about the “quick export”? or is it self explanatory and I’ll see it on my word press back office?
Enjoy wherever you are.
Much love.
Sigal
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