Keeping a backup of your WordPress site keeps your content safe. Know how to complete backup your WP site including backup of wp-content directory, plugins, themes etc.
WordPress site backup is very important. WordPress runs on PHP and MySQL, if some day your site get hacked, you get any mallware attack or your content get deleted by mistake then you will be left with nothing but feeling sorry for never backing up your site. Backing up your WordPress site is very easy and you can do this both manually or automatically by using some plugin. If you are not good at cPanel, PhpMyAdmin and MySQL then you can automatically backup your site by using some plugin but remember all plugins are not good and some of them don’t even works so here we will be discussing about few good plugins that automatically backup your whole WordPress site. There are many plugins available but only a few of them take complete backup of WordPress site. By complete backup I mean backup of database, wp-content directory, themes and plugins.
WP-DB-Backup is a on demand WordPress backup plugin. It allows you to backup core WordPress MySQL database tables allowing you to backup other tables in same database..
How it works ?
It automatically creates /wp-content/backup-*/ directory inside your WordPress directory so you may need to make /wp-content writable. Not for only this plugin but wp-content directory contain all themes and plugins it should be writable. If your are successfully installing different themes and plugins that means your wp-content directory is writable so in this regard no need to do anything. This plugin temporary needs it to be writable so that it can create its backup directory.
How to use it ?
Install and activate it. Now you can setup your backup schedule providing your email address where you will be getting your site’s backup file.
Now Backup All Your Files, Images, Plugins and Themes etc
After your database backup is complete you need to backup other WordPress files. you can download all your files in wp-content directory from FTP or you may zip wp-content and download full zip file. I recommend you Cobian Backup, it allows you to specify all directories, frequency and destinations (you may use dropbox as destination) and it backups your directories to zip files according to the schedule you have given.
Other Methods
If you use cPanel then you can manually backup your images, themes, plugins. Visit your WordPress Site root directory, zip your wp-content directory and download it on your computer’s hard-drive. You can use PhpMyAdmin for backing up your site’s database, for doing this visit cPanel > PhpMyAdmin, select your site’s database and follow the steps given here.
If you want to backup only posts and pages then Visit WordPress Dashboard, scroll down to Tools, select export and download XML file containing all your posts. You may use this file anytime visiting same WordPress Tools menu, clicking Import, choose this file to upload. After Import completes all your site posts will be there on your site.
There is one more plugin available which automatically backups all your WP site. The problem is it is hasn’t been updated in over 2 years but some are still using it successfully. It might be useful if it works in your site too it backups: config file, .htaccesss file, database dump, themes folder, plugin folder and other uploaded content on your site. It give other useful options for monthly back up, keeping manual backup forever. It creates a zipped backup of your WordPress website and uploads it to Amazon S3 so you will be needing an Amazon S3 account. I don’t recommend this plugin because it may have compatibility issues when used with more recent versions of WordPress.