Backup entire WordPress site files to Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3, FTP, SFTP, WebDAV easy. There are lots of free and premium WordPress backup plugin. Although every one not working as we expected. Especially larger sites. In my case I used WPB2D, but it never completed its job. In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to easily backup WordPress site including uploaded files, database, core files to another cloud.
In case if your site hacked, accidentally deleted files, or malware inflected you don’t need to worry. With a simple step, we can restore it. In this post, I’m going to use Updraft plus WordPress plugin. It supports major free and paid cloud storage services as well as FTP connections. Therefore it’s one of the best and powerful WordPress backup plugin. Updraft plus store backed up files as zip format, therefore it’s more convenient to transfer. Especially when we are restoring.
A few days ago when I’m modifying my one of the sites, accidentally I have deleted my entire site (public_html folder) including all the uploaded files, themes, plugins, and even core system files. However, with this Updraft plus backup files and mover free service, I can restore the entire site in less than 20 minutes (1.5 GB size). This tutorial only covers backing up the site, if you need to restore files, you can read my Mover Free files transfer tutorial.
This free plugin can backup your entire site to another location or inside of your WordPress installation it includes the core files as well as user files such as uploaded images, etc stuff. Just like cloning your WordPress to another location. This same method can be used when you are moving your hosting provider. However it’s not recommended to keep backup locally (cpanel), in case if anything goes wrong, those backups can be damaged. So it’s better to go to another location such as a cloud. Apart from that, if you need only backup WordPress posts; without the images, then you can use the database backup option. But it’s not recommended.
How to WordPress Backup to Dropbox, Amazon S3, Rackspace, Google Drive.
Basic configuration.
- First create a free or premium account on Dropbox, Amazon S3, Google Drive.
- Second install Updraft plus the plugin (download in here).
- After the installation completed go to “Settings>Updraft plus Plus backups”.
- Then under the “Configure Backup Contents And Schedule” choose backup intervals. It depends on how often you update your blog. If it is regularly updated it’s better performed daily. Also, consider your remote location size.
- Then, “retain this many backups” drop-down menu, choose how many backup files should keep in the remote location.
- Next under the “Include in file backup:” choose which files backup. If you need to backup entire WordPress, mark all the checkboxes.
- In order to receive the backup completed notification, type your email address.
Choose a remote location.
- Under the “Copying Your Backup To Remote Storage” dropdown menu, select your backup file storage location. It can be your Dropbox, Google Drive, Rackspace, AmazonS3, FTP, or any other supported location.
- Once you have selected the location, it automatically shows authenticate link like bellow. Don’t click that link now. First, you need to save the configuration.
- Then click the “Save” button.
- Now click on the Authenticate with link (above screenshot).
- It will redirect you to the remote location authentication page. For instance, if you choose Dropbox, it shows the following type page.
- Click the “Allow” button. If you selected another service such as Gdrive or Amazon S3, its authentication page different than this one. In my case WordPress backup to Google Drive, not a success. It’s not necessarily mean Updraft plus can’t back up to Google drive. Therefore I use Dropbox. Also, I have 50GB free space.
- Now everything completed. You will be again redirected to the settings page.
How to perform a backup job manually.
- Updraft plus will perform a WordPress backup at a scheduled time. Although users can perform on-demand as well as manually.
- To perform on-demand WordPress backup go to the Settings>Updraft plus Plus page and click on the “Backup” button. This will take several hours. It depends on your file size. In my case, it took 2-3 hours. Users can check the progress by click on the “Backups, logs & restoring:” link.
- This plugin automatically sets the scheduled time as the Updraft backup configured time. For an instance, if you save updraft plus settings at 10.00 AM today and you set up daily backup, this plugin sets its scheduled time at 10.00 AM and the next backup will perform tomorrow at 10.00 AM. To change that time, you have to purchase the add-on.
Working man. Thanks a lot
Glad to hear you can protect your site. 😀
What about CPU and memory usage during the back-up process? I am in a shared hosting and I don’t want to be limited by my hosting provider 🙂
I don’t think it will eat your resource. This plugin respects the max execution time etc. Therefore, it will not limit or slow down your site. To take best performances runs UpDraft Plus first backup off peak time. Then it sets that time as the future backup time.