Wordpress is a fantastic tool for creating any type of website.  However, servers can crash, MySQL databases can get corrupted and gremlins can get into the works! 

With traditional websites built in HTML, you have always had the option of keeping a backup of your site on your hard disk.  With Wordpress it’s not so easy, as there aren’t physical pages you can backup.  The pages are all stored in the mySQL database until required, and then built when requested.  Keeping backups is therefore something that a lot of people skip, because they think it is too hard.  Well, the good news is, those people are wrong.

Every week I am sent fresh backups of my blogs automatically, straight to my inbox, and I want to show you how easy it is.

The first thing you need is a plugin called WP-DB Manager.

Download and install the plugin.  If you need help installing Wordpress plugins, see my Installing Plugins in Wordpress tutorial.

Once installed, you’ll have a new menu item in your Wordpress Dashboard called “Database”:

If you open the main “Database” menu, you’ll see a lot of options.  The one you need to open is DB Options.

Once the screen opens, scroll to the bottom to the Automatic Scheduling section:

The important sections here are highlighted in the screenshot.  First, define how often you want the database backed up.  I have it scheduled for once a week on blogs I post to weekly, and more frequently for blogs I post to daily.  You can select an option to have the backup zipped.

Next, enter an email address to get the backups sent to.  Once this is filled in, the plugin becomes active as soon as you save the changes.  However, before you save, there is one other option – automatic optimizing of the database.  I have this set to once a week on all of my blogs.

Once those pieces of info are entered, scroll to the bottom and hit the “Save Changes” button.

Once saved, you can scroll back down to the Automatic Scheduling section and you’ll see the “Next Backup Date” and “Next Optimize Date” are now filled in with the dates of the next automated backups. 

You can now sit back and wait for the plugin to send you automated backups.  I have a mail filter setup in my mail client to automatically file those emails in my Blog Backup folder.