Using BackupBuddy to backup or move your WordPress site

There are very few WordPress plugins that I would list as essential. BackupBuddy is one of those plugins, it is installed on every WordPress site I have created including this one. Yes it costs money, at this time $75 for two sites, the peace of mind is worth ten times that. You have all heard the mantra “backup everything and backup often”, but how many of you do? If you are running a e-commerce solution then this goes doubly for you, it will not just be some cute photographs of your puppy and vacation you lose, but real time and money. It can just end up in the too hard basket, that “often” bit, who has the time! Well BackupBuddy has the time!

BackupBuddy is an automated backup system for WordPress and more. What can BackupBuddy do?

• It allows you to schedule database only and full backups, yes schedule, you do nothing.
• Those backups can automatically be emailed to you, sent to AmazonS3, Dropbox, or any server via FTP.
• If your site is hacked or goes down for any reason it allows you to restore with a few clicks.
• It will move your complete site to a new location, plugins, content, everything and fix all of the URL’s giving you a fully functional exact copy at your new location.
• It can backup and restore or migrate a full WordPress Multisite installation.
• It will import or export a single site from WordPress Multisite.
• And just for good measure it can scan your site for malware.

And it is easy!

If you absorb all my sage advice and just want some one to move a site, see my WordPress and  WP-Ecommerce services page and drop me line.

Now I could write a lengthy tutorial but it is so much easier to watch a demonstration. So of course watch the videos on the BackupBuddy site, but wrap you eyeballs around these videos which I have carefully selected as well. I have watched a lot of bad ones so you don’t have to.
First thoroughly explore all of the different settings in BackupBuddy. I know I know, who reads the manual. Well take a few minutes, 7 minutes 15 seconds to be precise, it will save you a lot of time and get you started on the right foot.

So that’s all well and good you say, I have backups scheduled but what do I do when the world ends and I need to restore my site? It is super easy ,an empty directory yes not even WordPress, a database with a name, no tables just a user and password and you are good to go. Don’t believe me watch with your very own eyes!

Oh that was too easy you say, show me something impressive! How about moving your whole site to a new server? Now that sounds hard you say, well sorry to dissapoint, yes that is easy too.

Ok Ok its cool, you give in, you want it, but where are you going to keep all of those huge backup files of your massive site? Well firstly you can manage how many you keep, but still they could be big and who has all that server space. AmazonS3 is your friend with ridiculously cheap storage, pennies literally, 14 cents per gigabyte per month. Backup a very big site for $1.68 a year, and that gets you multiple server redundancy on multiple continents. Just to make it completely painless BackupBuddy will send your backups into your S3 account automatically. Too good to be true, just watch.

Your website is small, you are just to cheap to spend 14 cents a month, well we still have you covered. Get yourself a Dropbox online storage and sharing account, it is useful for many things and it gives you 2 gigs of free, YES FREE storage to keep your backups and other goodies in. Dropbox is also a really useful tool for sharing files and for synching files across multiple computers. If you do not know it check it out. It’s free remember, so why not. No more videos, but the process of sending your backups to DropBox is much the same as for Amazon S3. I know you can work it out.

One last time, if you still want help , see my WordPress and  WP-Ecommerce services page and drop me line.

That’s it folks, if you don’t backup and the interweb gremlins come a calling you really can’t blame me!