As part of our recommended standard installation of a wordpress site we suggest that you get the ‘WordPress Database Backup‘ plugin for your wordpress website. Setting this up will result in your getting an e-mail once a week with a copy of your database. We suggest you get a free e-mail account at a major provider that offers a decent amount of storage space like gmail, yahoo or hotmail.

In the event that something happens with your site, whether that’s a server crash, website hacker or even if you just accidentally delete the wrong part of your site you’ll have this file available to restore your WordPress database from. It’s very possible you might need some technical help in the case of a restore but having this backup file is 90% of the battle.

These instructions include screen shots and descriptions of the various steps required to install this plugin and configure it to do weekly database backups of your site. Click on any image below to see the full sized version.

Add New Plugins Login into your wordpress dashboard and click on the ‘Plugins‘ button in the column on the left side of your screen. This will open an expanded menu there. Choose ‘Add New’

Search for wp-db-backup Search for the term; wp-db-backup

Choose WordPress Database Backup Choose WordPress Database Backup by Austin Matzko and click install.

Click Install Now Click on Install Now to install the plugin

Activate WP-DB-Backup 2.2.2 Once this is installed then Activate this plugin

Select 'Tools' in the left dashboard menu and then pick 'Backup' Now go to the left column of your dashboard and clock on the Tools button. This will open up a menu below the tools section and choose Backup

Choose weekly backups (or more often if you want), set your external e-mail address (gmail, hotmail, etc) and check the additional database tables. In this section scroll to the bottom of the page to the Scheduled Backups section and choose Once Weekly. Enter in the e-mail address you want to have the backups sent to. We also suggest you check any extra database tables available in your site to make sure everything is backed up. Once complete click on Schedule Backup.

Tags: backups, plugins