Not backing up your websites, is like driving without car insurance. Hopefully you won’t get hit. However, what if you did? So many people don’t back up their websites. I have been guilty of that. Did you know 30,000 websites get hacked a day?! So, I decided to finally suck it up, and get a premium backup service. I decided to go with BackupBuddy. So I’ll show you how to back up your wordpress site using this service.
WHY AM I USING A SERVICE TO BACK UP MY WORDPRESS SITE?
Back in the day, it was so easy to back-up sites. I would just go to my FTP account, and just copy the site to my local hard drive. With WordPress, you can’t just do this. WordPress contains files, but it also contains databases. So you have to back up both. Which means you have to go into your Cpanel account and find the correct database. If you are like me, and host many sites, then it’s not that easy to find the correct one. I have backed up WordPress sites manually, but being consistent with the process is not easy. And that’s why I decided to use a premium service.
I chose BackupBuddy because it seemed like the easiest one to use, and the price for the amount of sites you can use is also reasonable. I decided to buy the 10 sites package, which is $100 a year. And at the time I purchased it, they had a 35% off special. So why not, it’s definitely worth the piece of mind.
So let’s see how easy this was to actually back up.
THE PURCHASING PROCESS
Go to BackupBuddy, which is part of the iThemes site.
Click whichever package you want. I chose the 10 sites for $100 a month. Purchase it and pay with PayPal.
Once you purchase it, you will also have your username and password. You login and will be taken to your main panel.
Click on download and save the file to your desktop.
Then go to your WordPress admin area. Time to upload the plugin.
Once you have uploaded the plugin, you should now have a new section in your WordPress that looks like this:
When you click on BackupBuddy. You are taken to admin screen that looks like this:
There are 4 sections to fill out. And each section will show you a check mark (except section 3) so you know you did it right. Not sure why.
1 and 2 are self explanatory. For number 3, you want your back-ups sent somewhere other than your local directory. That means if for some reason you get hacked, and you saved your back up in your local directory, then everything is compromised.
I have a DropBox account so there is an option for that. If you don’t have one, there are other options as well. Let me show you how the DropBox feature works.
Once you select the DropBox option. You get the following screen. You will want to click “Connect to Dropbox and Authorize”
This will open a new window and you have to login to your dropbox account. Once you do. The following screen should show up:
Then you have to click “Yes, I’ve Authorized Backupbuddy with Dropbox”
Before you exit the screen, this prompt will come up. Since I host so many sites, I change the name below (yoursite) to the site name. Or else, all of your backups will be under the backupbuddy directory. Then click “Add Destination.”
After you add that, you will then choose how often you want to back up your site. There is a starter selection that is recommended.
Click Save Settings. Your backup should start immediately. This is what it should look like:
And you’re done!
FINAL THOUGHTS
So overall, it is easy to set up. However, it could be easier. The first time I used it, I was backing up a domain that had several AddOn sites. So I got an error because it was too large. I shouldn’t have received that error no matter how large my site it. So I went to the support forum, but it’s not immediate support. So I was waiting a very long time for their support to tell me what’s wrong. Luckily, I figured it out myself. But if you need immediate help, then forget it.
There is an option to delete local back-ups once it transfers to DropBox. But this is after the fact. Would be nice to be prompted as it is happening. And if there is a prompt, then I missed it and it should have been more obvious.
It did feel a little clunky when I had to connect it to DropBox. On one occasion I also got an error and then I saw that there were 2 DropBox accounts. So I went in and I deleted both and started again.
Whatever you use to back up your WordPress, just make sure you do it!
