Sphinn - A Guide to backup Your WordPress Blog

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Sphinn It!

Went Hot: November 18, 2007 - 6:41 am
Posted By: Digitalmusings 596 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://digital-musings.com)
Category: Blogging

I wrote this article after I almost lost my blog to a server crash. Although one reads about the importance of backing up the blog, not everyone takes it seriously. I urge my fellow bloggers to take this very seriously and make a regular schedule to back up their blogs.
This posts lists the various tools and resources that one can use to backup the blog.

5 Comments

Who Desphunn This (0)

Comments

from markhawk 595 days ago #

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Didnt know that databases and site needs to be backed up separately. Thanks for clearing that point! :)

from jordan 595 days ago #

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I use a common LAMP server and back up all of my databases by simply creating a folder for each backup and then calling a CRON job each day.

So, I have folders like this ABOVE my public_html directory:

/databasenamebackup/monday/
/databasenamebackup/tuesday/
/databasenamebackup/wednesday/
/databasenamebackup/thursday/
/databasenamebackup/friday/
/databasenamebackup/saturday/
/databasenamebackup/sunday/

and a CRON job to backup the database each day into the relevant folder, using the following format in the CRON job:

find /home/SITEHOMENAMEGOESHERE/databasenamebackup/monday/monday_wiki.sql -atime +2 -exec rm -f {} ';'
mysqldump -uUSERNAMEGOESHERE -pPASSWORDGOESHERE DATABASENAMEGOESHERE > /home/SITEHOMENAMEGOESHERE/databasenamebackup/monday/monday_wiki.sql

(The above CRON jobs altered to suit each day of the week.)

This gives me a daily backup that I can easily restore from on any day.

I don't bother to backup all of WordPress (or whatever other blog or CMS I am using), but simply pull the altered folders (like template folders) over to my hard drive with Filezilla. If I also want to pull the database backups over to my PC, all I have to do is pull over the whole /databasenamebackup/ folder.

Quick and easy (once you get the CRON jobs set up.)

Jerry

from iBrian 594 days ago #

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What I'd love to see is a script that will backup a copy and email it to you, without leaving backup copies on the server.

Anyone seen something like this in the wild?

from jordan 594 days ago #

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iBrian,

I haven't tried to email database backups to myself, because I don't want such sensitive information sent via email, but the system should be able to email you the results of the backup with a command like

MAILTO=user@domain.com

at the end of the CRON job. I would suggest googling "CRON job email" or similar.

Also, I would recommend encrypting the email, to protect any sensitive details in the database from interception while in transit from your server to your PC. I did a search for "encrypting CRON job email" and found a few promising examples.

CRON jobs are fantastic for automating a lot of things like this and I personally wouldn't buy software to do something like this, when the capability is already on my server.

Cheers,

Jerry

from iBrian 592 days ago #

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Thanks for the comment, Jerry - will keep an eye out. :)