How to Backup Your WordPress Powered Site
February 18, 2008 by Gurmit BalIf you have created a website or blog using WordPress and you don’t want to lose your content in the event of a mishap, it’s important to regularly backup your WordPress powered site so that you can easily restore your site from your backup in the event that a disaster occurs and your website becomes unavailable.
Backing up your WordPress powered website or blog is a two step process:
- Backup your WordPress database
- Backup the WordPress files and Folders
Backing Up Your WordPress database
You should backup your WordPress database on a regular basis if you frequently update your web site or blog and your content is so important that you don’t want to lose it. You can backup your WordPress database using phpMyAdmin as described in my article
How to Backup WordPress Database with phpMyAdmin (opens in a new window).
Backing up WordPress Files and Folders
You only need to backup your WordPress files and folders if you have made any modifications or customizations or uploaded some custom content such as images etc. The simplest way to backup your Wordpress files and folders is to use your FTP client and download a copy of all content and files to your computer
For example, if your WordPress is installed in the root directory (usually public_html or www), use your FTP client to download a copy of everything inside the public_html or whatever folder your WordPress is installed in. Depending upon what sort of FTP access your web host allows, you may not be able to download a copy of all the content inside the public_html folder; that is your FTP connection will be lost before the download is complete. If that happens then try downloading copies of individual files and folders inside the public_html folder and maintaining the same structure as your live site.
