Back Up your Databases/Content!
I have been creating a lot of wordpress blogs for many of my clients. Recently I created one for a woman who is a public speaker/entrepreneur. She just got a new host and her site is/was looking awesome! We transferred over her old blog and added a bunch of new pages.
Her site is based off of wordpress so all the content is stored in a database on her host. Well I was visiting the site just to take a peak at it some more and I saw in big black letters: “Data Base Error…”. I have seen it before and it wasn’t a big deal the host was just having a problem and later on during the day the site was able to connect to the database the content was viewable.
I thought I would take a look on her host and check out the databases and see if I could fix it just in case something accidentally got broken or just to get a better idea of why this was happening and maybe I could fix it quickly. Soon enough I spotted exactly why it was happening because there were no databases! The ones we had stored 20+ pages of content in were mysteriously gone. Whether she accidentally deleted them some how, the host crashed, or it got hacked (which is very unlikely) it was all gone.
So my message to any one using a content management system or any application that draws from a database. You need to back it up regulary whether it be daily, weekly, or monthly depending on how often it is updated. Updating wordpress only take several minute depending on how much content you have.
To back up your content in wordpress 2.6 – in the admin panel go to manage then export.
To back up your content in wordpress 2.7 – go to tools then export.
January 23rd, 2009 at 1:04 pm
I just found this plugin for wordpress and I think it does allow you to e-mail the back up to yourself..
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-db-backup/
January 23rd, 2009 at 10:17 am
I’m not sure about the plugin but if you make it you will be famous lol… Really though I should check that out because that is a pain having to do it manually all the time the only problem I can think of with that is if the back file is really large. but mine right now is under 50 megs for sure. Maybe if the plugin uploaded the back up file on another server or stored it somewhere on your current server that would be awesome.
January 23rd, 2009 at 8:40 am
Do you know of a plugin or something that will automatically export and email the XML file to you? Using WordPress 2.6
January 23rd, 2009 at 8:31 am
Good tip! I haven’t thought about that in a while Rich.
Hope things are going well~
January 21st, 2009 at 9:39 am
In my application, I backup the database automatically every day and remove the old updates every two weeks or so. I would highly suggest automating the process because, from personal experience, often when you need the update you have not done it in a couple of weeks or so. Have a blessed day.