…is data loss. I bet you thought I was going to say “zombie apocalypse”.
Probably drew the brain a bit big for an SEO consultant. Feel free to steal this image.
Usually I encourage people not to be afraid of blogging, because you can recover from any blog-related mistake — except unrecoverable data loss. The worst thing that can possibly happen is that you spend years writing posts and then, BOOM! something goes wrong and you lose everything.
You can avoid that nightmare scenario with a solid backup strategy.
- For self hosted WordPress blogs I use the excellent WordPress Database Backup Plugin. It gives you an admin panel where you can set up (and this is key) automated scheduled backups that go to your email inbox. Every day I get an email with a zip file of my blog database backup. I doubt my backup file will ever get bigger than Gmail’s 10MB attachment file size limit. My ~200 posts are only 600KB when all zipped up.
- For WordPress.com or TypePad hosted blogs you’ll have to set up a recurring calendar event (say once a week) and manually “export” your posts and comments. WordPress.com and TypePad are (hopefully) totally secure and backed up, so you shouldn’t ever experience data loss, but it’s best to be safe.
- Feedburner email updates are another option. Just subscribe to email updates of your RSS feed and auto archive them. It would be a pain to restore your blog from these emails, but at least you’ve got an automated secondary backstop, just in case.
- What about backing up images used in posts, plugins, and custom themes? If you’re self hosted, you can FTP to your sever and download the folders that contain these. (For WordPress just grab the /wp-content/ folder which contains everything you’ll need). There is a WP plugin that backs up files, and a 3rd party blog backup service, but I haven’t tried either of them. If you know what you’re doing you could also set up a cron job to automatically backup your files to another server or your own computer. Remember, a backup isn’t a backup unless it’s in a different physical location than the original.
- I’m on TypePad or WordPress.com, how do I back up images? You’re stuck, unless you want to page backwards for all those posts and manually save those images. The best thing to do is save any images you upload in a folder on your own hard drive. Note: all reputable hosted blog providers let you export your posts and comments, but they typically don’t let you easily export your images or template files. It’s a nasty bit of hidden vendor lockin.
- How do I back up my WordPress/MovableType installation? The good news is you don’t really need to back up your WP/MT installation. If something happens, you can always download it again.
- So what’s the WordPress Ninja Way? Here’s my setup:
- I use the WordPress database backup plugin to get automated emailed backups.
- My entire WordPress setup (themes, plugins, and core installation) lives in Subversion version control. This is like TimeMachine for my blog’s source code. This means I have a copy on my own computer, on the web server, and in my SVN repository. I can go forward and backward in each file’s history, and see every change I’ve made. I wouldn’t expect a “normal” person to know how to do this, but if you’re a developer, I’d say “shame on you for not using version control“.
- Important: my “uploads” folder that holds uploaded images and files is explicitly excluded from Subversion. It’s done this way for technical reasons that I’m to lazy to go into right now. To back up the uploads I have a recurring calendar event that reminds me to manually grab the folder via FTP.
- Also, I always keep my WordPress installation and plugins patched and up to date and I use hard to guess passwords.
Resources and further reading:
- WordPress Database Backup Plugin
- WP plugin that backs up files
- 3rd party blog backup service
- Havi Brooks’ ongoing series about dealing with blogging hangups
- Backing up your WordPress.com blog
- Official WordPress documentation on backups
I back-up from my Cpanel and it give me one of those .tar files. Is this just as good? Or should I be using that WP plug-in? More disaster-friendly, you think?
Good warning man. (And a very fetching zombie). :)
The .tar file is a “zipped” up version of your database, so that’s fine. I like the plugin because it’s automated. Having to remember = you’ll forget.
“For WordPress.com or TypePad hosted blogs you’ll have to set up a recurring calendar event (say once a week) and manually “export” your posts and comments.”
It doesn’t have to be that way. I wrote a small perl script which downloads the backup xml file without user interaction. What means it can be scheduled to run as cron job = unattended backup.
http://unixwayoflife.wordpress.com/2008/11/08/automated-wordpress-com-backup/
Having an automatic plugin should be automatic! Especially for dummies like me who never think about b/u until the pain hits…like it did last year on my boxing blog! Now I’m a dedicated WordPress Database Backup Plugin devotee.