Let’s face it—bad things happen to good Web sites sometimes. In the event that some or all of your site is damaged or deleted, you want to be able to restore it quickly. That’s why backing up your site is a must. For your Wordpress site, you will want to back up two things:
- Your Web site root directory files
- Your Wordpress database
Backing Up Your Web Site Files
These instructions assume you are using a Cpanel hosting interface. We recommend HostGator for your Web hosting service, so if you are using HostGator, you have Cpanel. Your Cpanel access will be at http://www.yourdomain.com/cpanel.
- Log in using your hosting account user name and password (not your Wordpress username and password).
- Click on the Backup Wizard in the Files section of your Cpanel dashboard.
- Click Backup.
- Now you will be given a choice of full or partial backup. We are going to back up the home directory only, so click Home Directory. (We will be backing up the MySQL database separately via Wordpress—you’ll se why in a bit, so keep reading!)
You might also want to back up the email information associated with your site, which you can do through the Wizard, but that is outside the scope of this article.
- Click Home Directory to begin the download. You’ll be prompted to save your backup as a tar.gz file. This is a compressed format. If you were to need to restore your files, you would use the Backup Wizard to do so, so you don’t need to worry about uncompressing the files.
- In the download dialog box that appears, make sure the Save File option is selected and click OK.
Save that backup someplace safe on your hard drive or a flash drive. If you were to need to restore the home directory, you can go to the Backup Wizard to do so (only then you’d choose to restore, not back up, and you’d upload the folder you saved during back—so, again, keep that folder someplace safe!).
Backing Up Your Wordpress Database
Your JiffyBat site will come with a handy plugin called WP-DB-Backup already installed. (Download the WP-DB-Backup plugin for free if you don’t already have it.) Your friendly neighborhood Web developer (that’s me) will have already set it up to email you a database backup at least once a week. You can reschedule or disable this auto-send yourself. You can also back up your database on demand with a just a few clicks.
- From your Wordpress admin dashboard, select Backup from the Tools menu. You will be taken to the Backup configuration page.
- Scroll down to the middle of the page (Backup Options). This is your on-demand backup. You can download a copy of your database any time from here. Choose to save it to your Web server, save it to your local machine, or have it emailed to you.
If you want to schedule a backup, scroll down to the bottom of the page (Scheduled Backup). Set the frequency of the backup and the email address where you want them to go.
You’ll see a lot of checkboxes on this page for tables to include or exclude. You can safely go with the default options, but if you have more specific questions and want more details about this plugin, head on over to the plugin developer’s FAQ or support forum.
Restoring Your Database
If the worst happens, and you lose your database, follow the instructions on the Wordpress.org site to restore it. Hint: You can access phpmyadmin from your CPanel account.
