This free plugin creates a complete backup for your site.
You can store it on the cloud (Dropbox, Amazon S3, Rackspace, Microsoft Azure, SugarSync), FTP server, email, or on your own computer or PC.
BackWPup lets you to schedule automatic backups according to your site’s update frequency.
Yes, it is a great backup tool.
But here is a piece of bad news for some non-techies.
There is NO restoration function included in the free version.
It means you cannot use this free version plugin to directly restore from your WordPress admin panel.
You need to restore the backup manually with phpAdmin or with FileZilla.
At the end of this post, there is a link to how to restore full backup save by BackWPup plugin stored in Dropbox with FileZilla.
Anyway, for those of you who are not familiar with manual backup, then forget about this free version plugin.
How To Create WordPress Backup With BackWPup
1. Click here to install and activate BackWPup plugin.
2. After activation, the plugin will display a welcome page.
3. You can see "BackWPup" menu item in your WordPress admin sidebar on the left side of the page.
4. Move your mouse cursor over the word "BackWPup", and a menu appears next to it. Click on "Add new job".
5. It will open a new page showing four tabs: General, Schedule, DB Backup, Files and Plugins.
General Settings
6. Let's start with the "General" tab.
7. For "Please name this job", you can use its originally provided term "New Job" or you can change it to your own. For example: "Monthly File & Database Backup".
8. This name is used internally only and it is for your own reference.
9. For the "Job Tasks", there is this "This job is a..."
10. By default, it has pre-selected three options out of five for you.
11. Since you just want to create backup of your website, then you should select these four jobs:
- Database backup
- File backup
- WordPress XML export
- Installed plugins list
12. Now you can see four more tabs, namely: DB Backup, Files, XML export and Plugins.
13. For "Backup File Creation", the "Archive name", you can change it to your own preference, if you want to.
14. For example: backup_monthly_files_database_%Y-%m-%d_%H-%i-%s
15. The "Archive Format", you can leave it as: "Tar GZip" or you can select "Zip".
16. For "Job Destination", it means where you want to store your backups.
17. You can store your backup files on your server, send it to your own email in-box, backup to FTP, backup to Dropbox, Amazon S3, Windows Azure, Rackspace, and Sugarsync.
For this tutorial I will show you how to store your backup in Dropbox.
18. Once you select Dropbox, it adds another tab called "To: Dropbox".
Note: My advice is DO NOT store the backups on your host server. If the server is down, then you lot all your backups!
19. For "Log Files", type in your email address in the box provided next to "Send log to email address".
20. Then click on the small box next to "Send email with log only when errors occur during job execution".
21. Now click on the blue color "Save changes" button.
Schedule
1. For "Start job" you select "with WordPress cron". It means it will perform automatically for you.
2. For "Schedule type", leave it as "basic".
3. For "Schedule execution time", it's up to you.
4. You can set at a time when you are unlikely to be making changes to your site. Or you can schedule your backup job at the time when your site has its lowest number of online visitors.
5. After you have done that, click on the blue color "Save changes" button.
DB Backup
From what I know sometimes WordPress plugins do create their own tables into your database.
I am told most of the time this data is not really important and you may not need it.
You can uncheck these tables, to reduce your backup size.
But if you are not too sure about it, it is best keep all tables selected as it is.
Set the backup file compression as GZip.
Files
After you have just backup your database, now it's time to backup your WordPress files.
By default BackWPup will backup your WordPress install folder, content, plugins, themes and uploads
1.You can use its default settings.
2. The "Backup themes", for "Exclude", I select those themes which I do not use.
3. The "Backup uploads folder", for the "Exclude", I select "backwpup-7514fd-logs".
4. The rest of the settings, I leave it as it is.
5. Then click on the blue color "Save changes" button.
XML export
1. For "Items to export", select "All content".
2. For "File compression", select to "none".
3. Click "Save changes".
Plugins
1. You do not have to make any change to its original settings.
To: Dropbox
As I have selected to store my backups to Dropbox, I need to configure this section.
1. To use Dropbox, you need to sign up an account with them.
2. If you do not have an account with Dropbox, click "Create Account" button.
3. Here you will see a remark: "Not authenticated!" in red color.
4. If you already have a Dropbox account, click on “Get full Dropbox auth code” and it will send you to Dropbox site with the remark: "Sign in to Dropbox with BackWPup".
5. As you already have an account, you click on the blue color "Sign in" button.
6. Then it will show a new page where it informs you that Dropbox needs your authorization to connect BackWPup with your Dropbox.
7. You need to click on the blue color “Allow” button.
8. Then it will provide you with an authorization code.
9. Copy and paste it inside the box next to "Full Access to Dropbox".
10. For "File Deletion" configuration, leave it as 15 Number of files to keep in folder.
11. Then click the "Save changes" button.
12. You will see the green color word: "Authenticated!" next to "Authentication".
That's all you need to do to set up this plugin.
Check Job List
1. After you have created the so-called job, go to BackWPup menu on the left side of the page.
2. Click on "Jobs".
3. You can see the the report "Last Run" as "not yet". Because you have just scheduled it.
4. To check whether it is working properly, I recommend you do a backup right now.
5. To do that, click on "Run now" which is right below the name of your backups.
6. Now you see should see this: "Job currently running: Full backup".
7. To find out more details about your backups, click "Display working log".
8. You can know what types of files were backed up, when the backup occurred, the status, the size of the backup, and how long the backup took.
9. Finally, if you want to be definitely sure about your backups in Dropbox, go over to Dropbox to make sure the backup files was uploaded.
10. That's all.
By the way, there is a paid version called BackWPup Pro.
This version has priority support, and you can store your backups on Google Drive, and some other great features.
Note: Here is a tutorial on how to restore full backup save by BackWPup plugin stored in Dropbox with FileZilla.