Your WordPress database contains every post, every comment and every link you have on your blog. If your database gets erased or corrupted, you stand to lose everything you have written. There are many reasons why this could happen and not all are things you can control. But what you can do is
backup your data. After all, it is important. Right?
Below are instructions to backup your
WordPress Site and your
WordPress Database. In addition, support is provided online at the
WordPress Support Forum to help you through the process.
Making backups is essential because problems inevitably occur and you need to be in a position to take action when disaster strikes. Spending a few minutes to make an easy, convenient backup of your database will allow you to spend even more time being creative and productive with your website.
Backing Up Your WordPress Site
There are two parts to backing up your WordPress site:
Database and
Files. You need to back up the entire site, and you need to backup your WordPress database.
Below are instructions for backing up your WordPress database for various server programs. We will start with backing up the rest of your WordPress Site.
Your WordPress site consists of the following:
- WordPress Core Installation
- WordPress Plugins
- WordPress Themes
- Images and Files
- Javascripts, PHP scripts, and other code files
- Additional Files and Static Web Pages
All of these are used in various combinations to generate your website. The database contains your posts and a lot of data generated on your site, but it does not include the above elements that all come together to create the look and information on your site. These need to be saved.
Most hosts back up the entire server, including your site, but it takes time to request a copy of your site from their backups, and a speedy recovery is critical. You need to learn how to backup your own site files and restore them. Here are some methods.
Website Host Provided Backup Software
Most website hosts provide software to back up your site. Check with your host to find out what services and programs they provide.
Create Sync With Your Site
2Bright Sparks's Syncback and
WinSCP are programs which allow you to sync with your website to keep a mirror copy of the content on your server and hard drive updated. It saves time and makes sure you have the latest files in both places.
Copy Your Files to Your Desktop
Using
FTP Clients or
UNIX Shell Skills you can copy the files to a folder on your computer. Once there, you can zip or compress them into a zip file to save space, allowing you to keep several versions.
Remember, keep at least three backups on file, just in case one is corrupted or lost, and store them in different places and on different mediums, like CD, DVD, different hard drives, etc.
Database Backup Instructions
Back up your WordPress database regularly, and always before an upgrade or move to a new location. The following information will help you backup your WordPress database using various popular server software packages. For detailed information, contact your website host for more information on the program, control panel, and resources they provide.
Accessing phpMyAdmin
phpMyAdmin is one of the most popular database management systems found on most website hosts. You will need to know where it is and how to access it on your website host's interface or control panel. We have provided information on accessing phpMyAdmin below.
phpMyAdmin is used by site administrators to manage and interact with their MySQL databases. During the
installation process, you probably accessed mySQL through phpMyAdmin to create your WordPress Database and set up the password. WordPress stores all of its information in the MySQL database and phpMyAdmin provides the interface to access that data.
While familiarity with phpMyAdmin is not necessary to back up your WordPress database, these instructions should take you step-by-step through the process of finding phpMyAdmin on your server and then you can follow the instructions below as a
simple and easy backup or for more detailed instructions see
Backing Up Your Database.
Backup Resources
Backup Tools
Template Categories
