How to Backup a Wordpress Blog

Posted By: Tarik
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One of the most important tasks of managing a Wordpress Blog and/or custom website is to perform regular backups at scheduled times. I usually backup all my other Wordpress sites, but made the mistake of failing to backup my personal website. Bad idea!

There are three main parts to the backup: Wordpress core files, Wordpress database information, and PHP MyAdmin leftovers. The most important aspect is your content which is stored in the MySQL database. You can access these databases using PHP myAdmin in your Cpanel account.

Using PHPmyAdmin

Go to Cpanel and Open up PHPmyAdmin
Select the Wordpress database
Click Export and Select “Add Drop Files” and “Complete Inserts” box
Choose SQL, check save as file, then click Export

This method will give you a high useful SQL file with all your posts, comments, categories, etc in one file. Perfecto!

Backup in Wordpress Admin

Click Tools in the Wordpress Admin Dashboard
Select the Appropriate Author
Hit Export

Wordpress will export your data into a specialized Wordpress file called WordPress eXtended RSS or WXR for short. Now, you have two valuable download copies of your Wordpress content.

Backup the Core Files

Like any CMS, Wordpress has tons of core files that need to be uploaded to a remote server. If you lose these files, you will lose your themes, plugins, and anything else that’s custom tailored for your specific Wordpress download.

You can use any FTP to perform this portion of the backup. I like SmartFTP. I’ve been using it for almost 4 years now. It costs about $40 to download. There are free alternatives like CoffeCup or the Free Cpanel FTP tool inside your control panel.

Go to the root location of your Wordpress files on your server and highlight all the files
Download them to a location on your hard drive
Save the downloaded files and give the folder a descriptive name that you’ll remember.

That’s it! I recommend performing these tasks at least 1 per week, depending on how often you add content to your site and change the themes.