Having a recent back-up of your weblog is very important. Can you see the consequences if your webhosting company stops without noticing you? You can not retrieve your files and all the work you have done on the blog is lost forever.

Or if you wake up, enter your URL, and see it got hacked? All your files and databases are lost. Think about it. It is really important to have everything you need to get your weblog up and running again when something went wrong.

I always thought I had a good host, but the possibility always exists something happens. I realized that after my own host crashed (fortunately I received a database backup when they got online again!), and after an article I’ve read over at Upstartblogger.com. It could happen to you.

Back-up WordPress is simple

The back-up progress can be split in three parts. Your database, your wp-content map and your widgets.

Your database

The database is the part of your blog that continues to change. We publish posts all the time, we edit a page and we get comments. It is necessary to have a weekly, if not a daily back-up, or you might loose a couple comments or a post. If your blog is large and active, you should certainly back up your blog daily.

If we should backup manually, we often don’t have time or simply forget about it. Fortunately, plugin designers have created a couple Back-up plugins for WordPress. The plugin I use myself is called WP DB backup.

When you have installed this plugin, you could call for an instant back-up. You could also choose to get a backup send to your email adress every week, every day or even every hour! This plugin works great.

Your wp-content map

This is a very important point as well. When you have suffered a attack and you are re-building your blog from a back-up, you come to the conclusion you have lost your themes and plugins. Of course, you have your theme somewhere on your computer, but does this include some minor changes you made to improve your blog? Most of the time, they don’t.

When your blog gets down (without a reminder), do you exactly know which plugins you have activated? I guess not. A great way to help yourself saving time afterwards is making a list with all the plugins you are using on your blog.

In the wp-content map, the uploaded files are stored as well. The posts you’ve already made include images. You have uploaded these, and they are stored in the uploads map. When you loose those files, you have to upload all the images again. This gives a lot of work, and you have to update all the images in your articles with the new image-url.

Your widgets

I always thought WordPress Widgets are backed up when you back up your theme or database. That is not true, you have to back them up separately by opening a .txt file. Copy all the titles and content from your widgets inside it and the WordPress Widgets backup is ready.

Where should you store your backups?

My WordPress back-up files are safe and I have a couple places where I store them. It is important not to upload to your to your webhost. What if your webhost gets down and you aren’t able to access your files? Right, you have made back-ups, but you have lost them again!

My database back-up gets mailed to a stand-alone Gmail address. The reason behind it is because this email address can get accessed from the whole world. Everywhere and anytime I need a back-up, I simply log on to Gmail and I have a working one ready.

My wp-content map is stored on my USB stick. I have a map there with school stuff, but also a hidden map for back-ups. The wp-content map is also stored on my computer and mailed to my Gmail account. All the above goes the same for my WordPress Widgets.

Conclusion

Don’t underestimate back-ups. It really is a lifesaver, so stop thinking “I don’t loose my files by an accident, it doesn’t happen to me”, because it can. I always thought the same way, until my host broke down and I had to restore everything from scratch. That really is a long and irritating job, which can be avoided with this couple, simple steps.