My WordPress How-To: WordPress Database Backup

How often do you back up the data on your computer? I’ll bet it is not enough.

What about your website? Most of us rely on our hosting company to handle our data backup for us but what happens if there is a problem? Are you willing to trust years worth of work to your hosting company? I didn’t think so. You need a way to backup your database. You need WordPress Database Backup.

WordPress Database Backup

WordPress Database Backup is a plugin by Austin Matzko that helps you easily manage the backup of the most important part of your WordPress site; the database. That database contains all the hard work and content you have been creating over the past days, months, and years.

Settings

Tables

This plugin is designed to backup the core WordPress database. You can choose from a list to add additional tables to the backup, depending on your setup. For example, my list contains two tables that hold information used in YARPP (Yet Another Related Posts Plugin). The tables can be easily recreated so I have chosen not to back them up.

Backup Options

If you want to backup your database immediately, here is where you can do so. You can save the backup to the server, download it to your computer, or have it emailed. When I first started using this plugin, my first task was to create a backup and download it immediately, just in case. I recommend you do the same.

Scheduled Backup

This option is where the real beauty of this plugin comes in. You can setup a backup schedule to automatically email you the database backup hourly, twice daily, once daily, or once a week. Since my sites are still small, I have chosen to backup once daily. I archive that email so it is available if it is ever needed.

On top of that, you can also choose additional tables to include only in the scheduled backup.

We all want to keep our data safe but if you are relying on your hosting company to do that for you, be proactive and backup your own database. I hope you never need the backup but just in case, install WordPress Database Backup and let it work for you.