One of the worst things that can pos­si­bly hap­pen to you when you are blog­ging is to loose your data. Out of every­thing you could choose to backup, the one ele­ment that is the most impor­tant is back­ing up your data­base. A lot of peo­ple do not do this, they rely on their host­ing provider, or might backup once every 3–6 months when they upgrade to the lat­est ver­sion of word­press (and many do not backup prior to that!). I

In this arti­cle, my goal is to get you to start back­ing up your Word­Press Data­base. This is going to be as sim­ple as pos­si­ble; we will be using a plu­gin that will make this so easy, and so auto­matic.  It is one of those set it and for­get it type things.

Image by shonk

How Often Should You Back Up Your Blog?

This depends on your post­ing fre­quency, how obsessed you are, and how bad you would feel if you just lost your lat­est post. I gen­er­ally rec­om­mend to clients to backup their data­base after each post, prior to installing a plu­gin, prior to upgrad­ing to the lat­est ver­sion of Word­Press, and prior to doing any admin­is­tra­tive tasks. If you need a nice round num­ber, I would backup my blog atleast once a week, if I posted 2–3 times a week (pretty normal).

If I wrote every day, I would make cer­tain to backup every 2–3 days at the least. If I ran a blog which had con­tribut­ing authors, was highly com­mented on, and had a post fre­quency of 2–4 times a day, I would backup daily. If that same blog had a higher fre­quency of 8–12 posts a day, I would choose to backup twice daily.

If what you are doing is very very mis­sion crit­i­cal, your host­ing provider can’t be trusted, or you mir­ror your blog on mul­ti­ple host­ing accounts, then select­ing once hourly may not be such a bad idea.

How Many Back­ups Should I Keep?

If you have done any IT work, you know back­ups are one of the most impor­tant processes.  I have done work for banks, hos­pi­tals, and col­leges. One thing these 3 places have in com­mon is how seri­ously they take their backups.

A hos­pi­tal I did some con­tract work for, had a van come to the hos­pi­tal, they trans­ferred the mate­r­ial live from that van.  The data was uploaded and stored in other loca­tions, as well as inside that van.  That van stays on call, and in the event of a fire of emer­gency, they have an exact dupli­cate of the data from the hos­pi­tal that can be up in min­utes. (The van also has a replica of the net­work equip­ment inside the van, so if a fire hap­pens, the IT staff can enter the van and expe­ri­ence no down time)  I have done work with places that have off site stor­age, and have their sta­tions mir­rored in another building.

Since this is just a blog, and not soo mis­sion crit­i­cal, I’m going to cover some ways to keep back­ups that are geared more towards our needs (and bud­gets). I will be cov­er­ing this in more detail in another post, as well as cov­er­ing some of the tech­nolo­gies and con­cepts taught in this arti­cle, in later arti­cles down the road. Ide­ally, you want at least 1–2 weeks worth of back­ups, less your data­base file is very large, then I rec­om­mend keep­ing 1 week. If you only backup once a week, obvi­ously you need more than 1 backup, I would keep a month, or at a min­i­mum 5 back­ups (incase one is corrupt).

Back­ing Up Your Word­Press Database

This is the sim­plest, and most effec­tive way to backup your data­base.  Any­one can do it, you have no need to pay some­one to do this for you. Down­load Word­Press Data­base Backup Install the plu­gin (Click here to learn How To Install Word­Press Plu­g­ins) Setup your desired fre­quency And you’re done.

Con­clu­sion

There are a few more things I would like to cover, but I will save them for a later post.  I want you to get started doing this now, as you never know when you might loose your site, or your data. This takes 5 min­utes to do, and is more than worth your time.  As I said in the begin­ning, it is very much set it and for­get it.

Once you acti­vate the plu­gin, set your desired back up fre­quency, it all hap­pens behind the scenes. In another arti­cle com­ing soon, I will cover more backup strate­gies, as well as some advanced tools (that cost very lit­tle) that allow you to man­age your back­ups with rel­a­tive ease. For now, I want you to select to have your data­base mailed to you.

You can setup a gmail account for your blog if you wish, and just have your back­ups sent there.  Doing so will leave you 99% bet­ter off than the rest of the pop­u­la­tion. So stay tuned, sub­scribe to the RSS feed, and share this link with your friends. Talk soon.

Tagged as: backup, database, Plugin, Tools, WordPress