wordpress database backup backup your blogAre you regularly doing a wordpress database backup? According to a recent poll conducted by PC Advisor, 30 percent of people back up data every day, but one in 13 never back up valuable data! I suspect the same can be said about bloggers, and yet your blog is very valuable data and if you’re not backing it up, it’s time to learn how. There are many wordpress plugin options for backing up your blog, but I resort to old fashioned methods in which I am in 100% control of the backup, and happy seeing the data stored on my own hard drive. It’s important to avoid losing data and hours of hard work, our friend Brian at Blog Engage recently had a database issue and nearly lost a whole lot of critical content on his blog (this happened while he was running a contest and contest information was nearly lost!), luckily Brian had a very recent backup and was able to restore his database. Read the near-horror story here.

Backup Your Blog: WordPress Files Backup

Editor’s Note. UPDATE This post originally gave instructions on file backup only, and yet was titled as a database backup. I apologize for the error and the misinformation. Only downloading your files from the FTP will not backup your MySQL database (which is where your posts, comments etc. are stored). Read about backing up your database directly on wordpress.org

Doing a wordpress backup is not too difficult, depending on the size of your blog it may however take more than a few minutes. That’s okay, you can let the backup run in the background while you’re promoting your blog!

The first step is to back up your files. I like to access my files directly, and for this I use the FTP client Filezilla. (Download filezilla by clicking on the previous link) (Note: the file backup method is only for those who own their own domain, and can gain access to their FTP)

Once you’ve installed and loaded up filezilla you can simply login to your website with your FTP username and password. This is different information from your wordpress login, and you should have been provided with this FTP login information from your host. Filezilla looks like the below screen (click on the image to see it larger), your login credentials are entered at the top, while the screen splits showing your local computer system on the left and the remote server on the right.

infocarnivore ftp filezilla wordpress database backup

Now you simply use filezilla like windows explorer, by clicking and dragging from the remote server to your local machine you will download all the data to the directory you specify. Simple! In this manner you can backup your blog files and do a complete backup without any extra plugins or concerns.

Step 2 requires you to do a WordPress Database Backup. The only database supported by WordPress is MySQL version 4.1.2 or greater. There are numerous plugins available to do this, or you can do it manually using phpMyAdmin. I’d like to be able to walk you through that process, but at this time the best source of information is directly from WordPress.

The plugin I am using is called WordPress Database Backup, which is simple to use and allows you to backup all or selected tables. The completed backup can then be downloaded as a tarball. Should you ever need to use the backup to restore your database you will need to utilize phpMyAdmin, and you can find instructions for that here.

What method do you use for doing a WordPress Database Backup? Or do you prefer doing it a different way? Let our reader know your thoughts with a comment below! And remember, info carnivore is a DO FOLLOW blog so commenting here will help increase your page rank!

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