Backing up your WordPress website – it’s not optional

r3df.com
lumostech.training
Rick Radko
“Backing up your WordPress
website"
WordCamp Montreal
Aug 16th, 2014
– It’s not optional

© 2014 Rick Radko, r3df.com
Topics in this presentation
We will consider the questions:
 Why back up?
 What to back up?
 When to back up?
 Where to back up?
 How to back up?
Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/r3df
1

A little bit about me
Rick Radko – R-Cubed Design Forge: r3df.com
Software, website and app designer/developer,
trainer, speaker.
Creating custom web sites since 1996, and
WordPress sites since 2008.
WordPress enthusiast.
 Lead organizer of: WordCamp Ottawa 2013, 2014,
and The Ottawa WordPress Group.
2

Why back up?
3

Why back up?
If you lost your WordPress site, how long would it
take you to rebuild?
a) Weeks?
b) Days?
c) Hours?
d) Minutes – because I have reliable backup.
4

Reconstructing a site without a backup
Even small sites take significant effort to rebuild:
 Reinstalling & reconfiguring:
 WordPress.
 Plugins.
 The theme (customizations?).
 Recovering content:
 Google or Bing search may have cached copies of
sites. -> Get them immediately!
 A lot of cut and paste and editing work.
 Re-uploading images.
Rebuilds cost: $$ and lost uptime. 5

Reasons you need a backup
Hardware failures:
 Disk drives fail.
Accidental deletions & damage:
 Who makes mistakes? - Everybody!
One of the makers of Backup Buddy talks about
both of these issues happening to him, in this talk:
 http://wordpress.tv/2011/01/29/matt-danner-why-
you-need-a-wordpress-backup/
6

More reasons you need a backup
Hacking/Malware/Virus:
 Can completely trash a site.
 May have all your files deleted.
 Could have every single file altered.
Over 1000 files in an empty WordPress install.
2-5000 files in typical small active sites.
Updates:
 Bugs
 Incompatibility
 Update fails to complete
7

What to back up?
8

What to back up?
2 things are needed to completely back up a
WordPress website:
1. A copy of the database - Which stores:
 All of your site content.
 Settings and config for WordPress, plugins and
themes.
2. A copy of the files:
 WordPress files, plugin files, theme files
Could be re-installed - but takes a lot of effort!
 Most important: UPLOADS!!!
wp-content folder - images & other added data
9

Database only back ups
If don’t do any file or media uploads*, then only
your database is changing and you can:
 Back up your database regularly.
 Typically a small backup compared to files.
 Only back up your files when they change.
 After updates for example.
 Typically a much larger backup.
 Each database backup will pair with the last file
backup, until changes are made to the files.
* Embeds (Youtube etc.) are not uploads.
10

Partial back ups
Some back-up systems will let you take a ”partial”
or “incremental” backup.
 Only saves the changes since the last backup.
 Reduces data to save.
 Increases restore complexity.
Higher risk of a corrupted backup.
11

When to back up?
12

When to back up?
For regular backups consider:
 The amount of data being added routinely:
 Your posting frequency.
 Visitor contribution frequency.
 How critical your site is.
 How big the site is. (Amount of data that needs to
be moved and stored)
13

When to back up continued?
Extra backups for:
 Significant change.
 WordPress, plugin or theme updates.
 Site overhaul or new content launch.
Plan for the unexpected.
Whether you back up daily, weekly or monthly
depends on your data change and how much you
are willing to loose…
14

Where to back up?
15

Where to back up
Off of your server!
 A file on your server, does not help with most of the
issues mentioned for needing a backup.
 A file on your server could be a security issue.
Other points:
 Off site (not in the same location as the server).
 Keeping 2 or 3 separate copies is recommended.
 Backup history – a period of older copies.
 Week of daily backups + 2 monthly backups.
16

Getting it off the server
A while ago backup systems could email you a
backup, but backups are generally too big now:
 A complete backup of an empty WordPress install
is about 6 MB, average sites can be 15-40 MB,
large sites in the 100’s of MB.
 Too big for most emails.
 Gmail will take up to 25 MB attachments, (if your
system will send it) but a lot of backups are even
bigger than that.
17

FTP it off the server
FTP is an option, but you need a place to FTP to:
 A common idea is to use another hosting account
somewhere.
 Most shared hosting does not allow data storage on
their servers (read the fine print in your TOS).
 Some hosting services offer storage, expensive
unless you have volume. (large corporation)
18

Send it to the cloud
Many plugins will let you store your backups on
one of the many cloud services.
 Amazon S3
 Dropbox
 Google Drive
 +More
This is a reasonable option for most sites.
 Cloud storage fees are quite low.
 Off site.
19

How much does the cloud cost?
20

Backup compromises
Ultimately the decision of :
 what
 when
 where
to backup your site will involve assessments of risk
and possibly compromises.
21

How to back up?
22

How to back up
Lets look at some tools/methods to do backups.
I’ve grouped them into 4 rough categories:
 Manual backups
 Backup plugins
 Backup services
 Site managers
23

Manual backups
Hosting control panel
 Most hosting control panels offer a backup option.
 Usually not automated.
 May not be very granular. (entire account only)
 You likely will also be able to backup by:
 Compressing (zip/archive) your files into an archive.
 Dumping (exporting ) your MySQL database.
(phpMyAdmin, and other tools)
 FTPing the files off the server.
24

Manual backups continued
The archive and SQL dump - pros:
 Very granular – any site/part of a site you want.
 Very reliable, .zip + sql dump is very portable, no
special software/tools needed to restore.
Tip:
 Including the date, 2014-08-16, in the names of
both the .zip and .sql files, helps keep backup files
together.
25

Manual backups continued again
The archive and SQL dump - cons:
 Need some knowledge:
 Database imports/exports.
Some GUI tools: phpMyAdmin.
 How to archive/un-archive (compress, .zip, gzip etc.)
 Comfortable with file systems on the server – often
Linux.
 Need additional scripts for site migration.
 Simple "search and replace" does not take into
account serialized data.
 No automated backups. (unless you script it)
26

Making sure it happens
Regular backups, daily, weekly or monthly, should
be automated, or they will not happen regularly.
 It’s not a fun task!
 We forget, or “don’t
have time”

Back up plugins
There are a lot of choices in plugins for back up.
 Many are free. (wordpress.org)
 Some are paid.
Key features to look for:
 Automated/scheduled backups.
 A must if you want reliable backups.
 Manual backups (on demand) using the same
settings as your automated backups.
 A recommended feature.
28

Plugin features continued
 File/directory exclusions.
 You may have some files you don’t want backed up.
 Allows backing up database only, files only or both.
 Flexibility in your backup strategy.
 Schedule multiple back ups on different timings.
 Offers choice of backup locations:
 Backups to cloud:
Dropbox, Amazon, Rackspace, Google Drive, Others?
 FTP to other servers/computers
 Email
29

Restore and migration features
Restore features:
 No install restores.
 Don’t need WordPress installed.
 May need a supporting script.
 Malware scans.
 Database optimization/repair.
Site migration:
 Important only if you want to move your site to a
new domain.
30

Multisite issues
If you have multisite enabled, consider whether the
backup plugin can:
 Backup sites individually?
 Backup a sub-network?
 Restore sites individually?
 Restore a sub-network?
 Migrate a single multisite site to/from a single site
install?
31

Some plugins (no order, or recommendation given)
BackUpWordPress
 http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/backupwordpress/
BackWPup (has $ version too)
 http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/backwpup/
WP Time Machine
 http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-time-machine/
WordPress Backup to Dropbox
 http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-backup-to-dropbox/
BackupBuddy - $
 http://ithemes.com/purchase/backupbuddy/
32

Back up services
When considering a service:
 Most of the same features as for plugins need to
be considered.
 One item that stands out is:
 Where are they storing your files?
 Secure – encrypted?
33

More on back up services
Unlike plugins:
 Most of the services cost.
 But they include storage.
 Threat and malware scanners are common in the
services.
 Some offer incremental backups.
 Only backup what has changed instead of the whole
site.
 Most don’t store files on your server.
34

A couple of services (no order, or recommendation given)
VaultPress
 From the people who make WordPress
 Starts at $15/month
 http://vaultpress.com/
BlogVault
 Starts at $9/month
 http://blogvault.net/
35

Site managers
Manage multiple WordPress sites from one central
admin panel.
 Offer a bunch of features for managing sites:
 Remote updates
 Add plugins themes
 Bulk postings
 Site analysis
 Backups
36

Two site managers (no order, or recommendation given)
InfiniteWP
 Download core software - free
 Add-on options for many features - $
 Backups to cloud
 http://infinitewp.com/
ManageWP
 Online service – limited account – free
 Full account - $
 Backups to cloud
 http://managewp.com/
37

Test your backup flow!
Test your backups!
 Backups only work if you can restore!
 Back up a test site and try restoring it.
 Make sure that automated back-ups are actually
running.
 Periodically check that you can restore your
backups.
Try new backup plugins on a test site, not your live
sites.
38

Automated backups and cron
To automate backups, plugins need something to
tell them to run, cron does that.
Unix/Linux Cron:
 Runs at set time, or on regular intervals based on
the server clock.
 Reliable.
 Not easy to use. Set using Unix/Linux commands.
Most backup plugins use "WordPress cron", not the
server cron.
39

WordPress cron – not the same!
WordPress cron:
 Triggered by visits to your site, NOT a clock!
 Every time someone visits your site, WordPress cron
checks to see if there were things scheduled to run
between the last visit and the current time.
 If you set a WordPress cron job for 1am, it won’t
happen until the next visitor, that could be hours
later.
40

One final note on backups
Backup is often not spelled correctly, a bit of
Googling reveals that:
The verb form is back up in two words, whereas
the noun is backup.
 Did you back up the hard drive?
 Where did you put the backup?
41

Contact
Rick Radko
 email: wpinfo@r3df.com
 twitter: @r3designforge
Websites:
 r3df.com
 lumostech.training
Slides at:
 www.slideshare.net/r3df
42

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