Creating backups of your blog is like drinking water. You know you should do it at regular intervals, but often times other activities get in the middle and you just forget about it.
The possible consequences of not backing up your blog, however, are much more serious than missing the middle-morning water glass. Should your server crash for some reason, or your websibe get hacked, you will lose valuable data.
Personally, I try to backup all my websites weekly (but I am lazy, so if you have time you can even do it daily!). Below you will find a quick checklist for backing up your blog.
- Use an FTP client to download all the site files (the WordPress folder)
- Log into phpMyAdmin and select your WordPress database
- Click on “Export” and make sure that all the WordPress tables are there
- On the “Structure” section tick “Add Drop Tables,” “Add AUTO_INCREMENT,” and “Enclose table and field names with backquotes”
- On the “Data” section leave all the boxes unticked
- Tick “Save as file” and download the database (you can use compression if your database is big)
If you don’t have access to phpMyAdmin, you can use the WordPress Database Backup plugin.
About Daniel
Daniel Scocco is a programmer and entrepreneur located in São Paulo, Brazil. His first company, Online Profits, builds and manages websites in different niches. His second company, Kubic, specializes in developing mobile apps for the iOS and Android platforms.
