How to Backup WordPress and Save Your Blog: Part 1 with Export and the WordPress Database Backup Plugin

We all know that backuping is very important, whether it’s the local backup of your summer photos or the blog that you’ve been working on for years. I’m aware that many of you know the theory behind, but only a handful of you apply it in real life, don’t you? Some of my friends lost entire master thesis’ because the only copy they had was on a USB memory stick which eventually failed.

With WordPress, creating a daily or weekly backup shouldn’t be a problem; it can be done automatically so there really is no excuse. This will be the first of several posts on backing up your WordPress blog. Today I’m going to show you 2 simple ways of backing up and next week I’ll try to explain things in a more hardcore way. Let’s go!

Export Your Content Inside the WordPress

WordPress has a built-in option for exporting some of your data so that you can create elementary backups easily. I say elementary because this will backup only your posts and pages and it won’t be done automatically every day. You’ll need to do it by hand. Also, you might have added some extra plugins and content that this method won’t take care of.

Nevertheless, anything is better than no backup at all. Go to Tools and select Export in your WordPress Dashboard. You can choose what you want to export; your posts, pages or all of the content. I must warn you that your links, passwords, users and any other setting won’t be included in this backup.

Once you choose what you want backed up, click Download Export File and you will get an XML (eXtensible Markup Language) which will contain all the data from your blog. Keep that file in a secure location, because if your blog crashes, this will be the file you will need to import into a new WordPress installation.

WordPress Database Backup Plugin

Another, more elegant option, is backing up with one of the many WordPress database backup plugins. There are several reasons for using it;

• It will backup your entire database;
• It will backup all of the tables in the database created by plugins or by you;
• It will e-mail you the backups so you can store them localy or in a Dropbox;
• You can set up scheduled backups so you don’t have to worry about forgeting to backup.

To install one of these plugins, you can either download it and then upload it to your blog, or you can just look for it inside the WordPress. Let’s do that! In your Dashboard, go to Plugins and then Add New. In the search box enter WordPress Database Backup and you should get dozens of suggestions. Depending on your needs, choose one and simply install it. After the installation, you will need to activate the plugin and set it up.

You see, creating backups of your WordPress blog isn’t really that hard. Now do it …and let us know if you’re backing up regularly 😉

Next week I’ll show you how to create backups right from the server where your blog is hosted, so make sure you follow us on Twitter or fan us on Facebook and don’t miss anything!