Backups, Backups, Backups

r3df.com
Rick Radko
Backups,
Backups,
Backups
Ottawa WordPress Meetup
May 6th, 2020

© 2017 Rick Radko, r3df.com
Goal
Answer the questions:
 Why back up?
 What to back up?
 When to back up?
 Where to back up?
 How to back up?
Slides: slideshare.net/r3df
1

I'm
Rick Radko – R-Cubed Design Forge: r3df.com
 Website and app developer/designer, & trainer.
 Custom web sites since 1996.
 WordPress sites since 2008.
 Plugins: profiles.wordpress.org/r3df/#content-plugins
 WordPress enthusiast:
 Co-organizer of:
 The Ottawa WordPress Group
 WordCamp Ottawa: 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017
 Co-organizer of The Ottawa PHP Meetup
2

Why back up?
3

Why back up?
Hardware failures:
 Disk drives fail.
Accidental deletions & damage:
 Who makes mistakes? - Everybody!
One of the creators of Backup Buddy
mentions both of these issues
happening to him, in this talk:
 wordpress.tv/2011/01/29/matt-danner-why-you-need-a-
wordpress-backup
4

More reasons you need a backup
Hacking/Malware/Virus:
 Could completely trash your site.
 Entire site deleted/replaced.
 Files could be altered.
 May be obvious or hidden.
 There are over 2000 files in WordPress alone.
 4000-6000 files in typical small sites.
 10,000+ files in large sites with complex plugins
 Database can be compromised.
5

Other reasons you need a backup
Updates:
 Bugs
 Incompatibility
 Update fails to complete
6

Time and $ to rebuild
If you lost your WordPress site, how long would it
take you to rebuild?
a) Minutes – because I have reliable backup.
b) Hours?
c) Days?
d) Weeks?
7

Reconstructing a site without a backup
Even small sites take significant effort to recover…
Rebuild the WordPress install:
 Plugins
 Setup and configure
 Theme
 Add customizations
 Add content
8

Reconstructing content
Recovering content:
 Google, Bing etc. may have cached copies, if you
lost the site recently.
 Get them immediately! (save as html files)
 A lot of cut and paste and editing work.
 Re-uploading images.
Rebuilds cost: $$ and lost uptime.
9

Why back up: TL;DR
Because the most expensive backup is the one you
didn’t do!
10

What to back up?
11

What to back up?
To completely back up a WordPress website, you
need:
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:
 Complete site, all the files…
Or
 Just the wp-content folder:
 Plugin files, theme files, your images & other added data.
12

That’s a lot of data!
Backups can be pretty big:
 A complete backup of:
 An empty WordPress install is about 12 MB
 Average sites are 200-500 MB
 Large sites can be GB’s.
13

Partial backups
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.
14

Database dominant backups
If you don’t do any file or media uploads* - only your
database is changing and you can:
 Back up your database regularly.
 Back up your files only when they change.
 Or at a lower frequency
Each database backup will pair with the last file
backup, until changes are made to the files.
* Embeds (Youtube etc.) are not uploads.
15

What to back up? TL;DR
 Files and database
 Backup types:
 Everything
 Partial or incremental
 Database dominant
16

When to back up?
17

When to back up?
For regular backups consider:
 The amount of data being added routinely:
 Your posting frequency.
 Multiple authors.
 Visitor contribution frequency. – comments etc.
 How critical your site is.
 E-Commerce?
 How big the site is.
 Amount of data that needs to be moved and stored.
18

When to back up continued?
Extra backups for:
 Significant changes.
 WordPress, plugin or theme
updates.
 Site overhaul or new content
launch.
Plan for the unexpected.
19

When to back up? TL;DR
The decision to back up daily, weekly or monthly:
 Depends on how much data you are willing to
loose…
20

Where to back up?
21

Where to back up
Off of your server!
 A backup on your server:
 Does not help with server
failures.
 A backup file on your server
could be a security issue.
22

Where to back up continued…
Other points:
 Off site (different physical location).
 Keeping 3 separate backups is recommended.
 At least one at a different location!
 Backup history – a period of older copies.
 Week of daily backups + 2 monthly backups.
23

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.
24

How much does the cloud cost?
Peanuts…
25

What, when, where? TL;DR
Ultimately the decision of :
 what
 when
 where
to backup your site will involve assessments of risk
and possibly compromises.
26

How to back up?
27

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
28

Manual backups
Hosting control panel
 Most hosting control panels offer a backup option.
 Usually not automated.
 May not be very granular. (entire account only)
File archive and SQL dump:
 Compress (zip/archive) your files into an archive.
 Dump (export ) your MySQL database. (phpMyAdmin,
and other tools)
 FTP the files off the server.
29

File 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 export or restore.
 Quick for experienced developers taking a “right
now” copy.
Tip:
 Including the date, 2017-04-03, in the names of both
the .zip and .sql files, helps keep backup files
together. 30

File 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, or Unix variant.
 Need additional scripts for site migration.
 Simple "search and replace" does not take into
account serialized data.
 See wordpress.org/support/article/moving-wordpress
31

The biggest issue with manual back ups?
32
Making sure it happens!
Backups 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 ups.
 Many are free. (wordpress.org)
 Some are paid.
Key features to look for:
 Automated/scheduled backups.
 A must if you want backups you can count on.
 Manual backups (on demand)
 Using the same settings as your automated backups.
33

More plugin features:
 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
34

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. 35

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?
36

Some plugins (no order, or recommendation given)
On wordpress.org: (freemium)
 UpdraftPlus WordPress Backup Plugin
 wordpress.org/plugins/updraftplus
 Duplicator/Duplicator Pro
 wordpress.org/plugins/duplicator
 All-in-One WP Migration
 wordpress.org/plugins/all-in-one-wp-migration
 + Many more on wordpress.org
 wordpress.org/plugins/search/backup
BackupBuddy - $
 ithemes.com/purchase/backupbuddy
37

Back up services
When considering a service:
 Most of the same features as for plugins need to be
considered.
 One item that is key:
 Where are they storing your files?
 Secure – encrypted?
38

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.
 Most offer incremental & partial backups.
 Only backup what has changed instead of the whole
site.
 Lower cost for them – less data
 Most don’t store files on your server. 39

A couple of services (no order, or recommendation given)
VaultPress
 From the people who make WordPress
 Starts at $20/month (USD)
 vaultpress.com
BlogVault
 Starts at $7.40/month (USD)
 blogvault.net
40

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
41

Some site managers (no order, or recommendation given)
InfiniteWP, MainWP
 Download core software - free
 Add-on options for many features - $
 mainwp.com
 infinitewp.com
ManageWP
 Online service base level - free
 Add-on options for many features - $
 managewp.com
42

How to back up? TL;DR
Lots of ways to do backups (some better than
others):
 Manual backups
 Backup plugins
 Backup services
 Site managers
43

Final Points
44

Test your backup flow!
Test your backups!
 Backups only work if you can restore!
 Back up a test site and try restoring it.
 Periodically:
 Make sure that automated back-ups are still running.
 Re-check that you can actually restore your backups.
Try new backup plugins on a test site, not your live
site!
45

WordPress cron – (or why doesn’t my back up run on time)
To automate backups, plugins need something to
tell them to run.
Unix/Linux Cron:
 Runs at set time, or on regular intervals based on
the server clock, but needs separate setup.
WordPress Cron:
 Triggered by visits to your site, NOT a clock!
 A WordPress cron job, set for 1am, may not happen
until hours later.
46

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 store the backup?
47

Contact
Rick Radko
 Website: r3df.com
 Twitter: @r3designforge
Slides at: slideshare.net/r3df
48

r3df.com
Rick Radko
Backups,
Backups,
Backups
Ottawa WordPress Meetup
May 6th, 2020
Slides at: slideshare.net/r3df

Backups, Backups, Backups

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