Whether you’re blogging for business or fun, chances are you’d be devastated if your blog suddenly disappeared. All of the hours you’d put into tweaking your theme and plugins, creating original content, and more would be gone. It’s very important to regularly backup your blog so you don’t risk losing your work. There’s always the potential that your blog could be lost, even with the best hosting in the world.
Just like backing up your computer, there are several ways you could backup your website. You could just download a copy of your entire WordPress directory via FTP every so often and manually backup your database. The problem is, most of us are forgetful, and disasters don’t wait for you to be prepared. This is where BackupBuddy comes in. BackupBuddy is a great plugin from iThemes that backs up your entire WordPress install, including plugins, themes and customizations, database content, images, htaccess files, and more. It can do all of this on a schedule, and then will save your backup file to a FTP location or store it on Amazon S3 storage. Let’s look at how you can use BackupBuddy to keep your blog safe.
Installing BackupBuddy
First, you’ll need to purchase BackupBuddy. You can purchase it from iThemes for $45 for up to 2 personal sites, or you can choose a business or developer license for 10 to unlimited sites. Once you’ve purchased and downloaded BackupBuddy, login to your WordPress dashboard and install and activate it as normal (Read our Step by Step Guide to Install a WordPress Plugin for Beginners).
You’ll need to add your BackupBuddy license before you can get automatic updates to the latest versions, so click Manage Licenses under the BackupBuddy information on the plugins page.
Enter your iThemes account you created when you purchased BackupBuddy, and then click Next to continue.
Now click Create Key, and your plugin will finally be fully activated. You’ll now receive automatic updates for BackupBuddy as long as your license is active.
Backup WordPress with BackupBuddy
Now that you’ve got BackupBuddy installed, it’s time to put it to work. Click the BackupBuddy button on the left WordPress toolbar to get started.
The first page will give you some info about BackupBuddy, with tips and tutorials on getting it setup. You can get started backing up your site by clicking the Backup link on this page.
Alternately, click the down arrow on the BackupBuddy button, and select Backups.
Now go ahead and create a first backup so your site will be protected as quickly as possible. Click the Full Backup button to save an archive of your entire WordPress site. While you’re at it, download the ImportBuddy.php file and save it to your computer; you can use this to re-create your site from your backup if you ever need to.
You’ll now see the backup progress listed on the top of the page. When it’s done backing up your site, you can download a zip archive from the list of backups on the bottom of the page. Do note that a full backup may be quite large, and may take a few minutes to process and longer to download, depending on the size of your site and your webhost’s server speed.
Save Your Backups To External Storage
One of BackupBuddy’s best features is that you can save backups to an FTP server or to Amazon S3. To do this, you’ll need to add your account info to BackupBuddy’s settings. Click the Settings link under the BackupBuddy button.
For most users, backing up to Amazon S3 will be the best option since it offers cheap storage that scales as you need it. To add your S3 account, scroll down and enter your account information. If you don’t have an account yet, check this article to see how to set your S3 account up and find your secret key.
Once you’ve got your information entered, click Test S3 Settings to make sure everything’s ready to go. If the test fails, double-check your information and make sure it’s correct.
On down on the settings page, you’ll have the option to enable or disable other BackupBuddy settings if you want. You can choose to enable or disable ZIP compression on your backups, check backups for integrity, backup non-WordPress database data, and more.
If you’d like to save storage space when creating backups, you can choose to exclude some of your WordPress folders from the backup on the bottom of the settings page.
Once you’re done changing your settings, click Save at the bottom of the page.
Schedule Backups
Now that you can save your backups off-site like you want, let’s get our site to automatically backup. Click the Scheduling button to set this up.
Now choose the type of database and how frequently you want to run the backup. You can choose to backup the database only, or backup your entire site. Then, select where to send your backup file, choose whether or not to delete the local file after backing up (we recommend you do), and click Add Schedule.
Once you’ve added your backup, you’ll see it listed on the top of the page. You can add multiple backups if you’d like such as a daily database backup and a weekly full site backup.
That’s all! Now your site will automatically backup itself, and you’ll never have to worry that you’ll lose your content.
Restore Your Site From a BackupBuddy Backup
Now, if something goes wrong and your server blows up, or you just want to move your site to a new server, just head over to Amazon S3 and download the latest version of your of your blog backup. If you’re backing up daily, you could even select a previous version of your site if you accidently delete a post.
To restore your full site, make sure you download a full backup from S3. Now, login via FTP to your hosting service, and upload your backup file and the RestoreBuddy.php file you downloaded previously. If you don’t still have it, you can extract it from your BackupBuddy zip file.
Once it’s done, browse to yourdomain.com/importbuddy.php. Follow the steps to restore your site, and within minutes your site will be up and running again, just as before! You won’t need to install WordPress, themes, plugins, or anything else; it’ll be just like nothing ever happened.
Conclusion
We’ve found BackupBuddy to be a very helpful plugin, and think it’s well worth the price. iThemes’ support is great too, so if you have any problems, you should find it easy to get an answer. It is a great alternative for users who do not want to pay monthly for backup services such as VaultPress. Let us know if you use BackupBuddy and what you think about it! If I were you, then I will purchase this plugin right now to give my self a peace of mind with a complete automated backup plugin.
Matthew Guay is a 21 year old tech writer. Originally from Tennessee, then later Texas, Matthew now lives in Tak, Thailand doing missions work, finishing his degree from Florida Tech, and blogging. He’s constantly looking out for nicer WordPress themes, plugins, and tricks, and administers several WordPress sites. He strives to make technology simpler for everyone at his blog Techinch.com, and at HowtoGeek.com where he’s a contributing writer. You can follow him on Twitter @maguay.
I am interested in this pludgin because the free off line plugin gets so full so quick. it really isnt an option.
Does this plugin store data OFF my server?
I recently got overloaded with backupwordpress which stores in on the server.
Also if it is hacked, they can delete the backups
Thank you for your time.
Mary
PS. I just found this site–WOW!
This plugin does store the data on external servers (dropbox, Amazon S3, Stash, etc).
Hi there. I installed w3 Cache and am running CloudFlare and MaxCDN (just like you) I am also using backup buddy (just like you).
However, since installing W3 Cache, my backup buddy won’t work. Any suggestions? Did you run into this issue at all?
Thanks!
Hey Christine,
We are not using CloudFlare on our site. As for why BackupBuddy is not working, did you ask their support team? They would be able to better assist you with any issues because they deal with this on a regular basis.
Backup buddy is one of the BEST plugins we have ever used. Our sites were hacked and if it wasn’t for this plugin and the guys at ithemes we would have lost everything. Ithemes support guys are terrific and helpful. Ask your questions in the support forum as every situation is a little different.
Thank you for this article.
Esther
I just love ithemes products and they are a very reputable company. Thanks for posting this! BackUp Buddy saved my site many many times. GO ITHEMES…
DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT. I purchased it about 1 month ago. Installed in my server that is managed by Rack911. My server is supposed to be 100% compatible with this software but the software did not work.
I went to their support site forum … and saw that many people were having exactly the same problem (infinite constant pings). Nevertheless I wrote a post asking for help … after 48 hours of not getting a response and seeing that nobody else was getting a response either I asked for a refund.
The company basically IGNORED MY REQUEST of a refund. I went to Paypal and filed a claim but that did not go well either as this is a NONTANGIBLE ITEM.
BASICALLY iThemes STOLE $100 from me. I warn you … DO NOT BUY BACKUP BUDDY!!!
That’s extremely unlikely of iThemes. They are a reputable company in the industry. I will be forwarding your comment to them and hopefully someone from their team can clarify it.
BackupBuddy is a very nice wordpress plugin for small blogs, bigger websites need others solutions. Thanks for the article
I have a doubt, Is there anything that this plugin is doing which WP_DB MANAGER which is free not doing ?
@Ankur YES. BackupBuddy protects a lot more than just the Database. They protect your ENTIRE site meaning themes, plugins, all the uploaded images etc. Whereas WP DB Manager only backsup the database.
Awesome informative blog post!… I love your blog! It was a very nice read.. keep up the good work you are …
Thank you SO much. This step-by-step – or rather click-by-click guide was exactly what I needed to pry myself out of anxiety-paralysis, and take yet another tiny move towards self-sufficiency and self-confidence. I was terrified by FTP backups and didn’t trust the automatic kind. And I would NOT have managed the twisty road for installing Backup Buddy and getting my AWS account activated without this friendly guide.
Best wishes for continued courage and patience to show us the way…
I’m tempted to try this plugin, but I’m concerned about one thing: hosting resource usage. I tried another solution, but had to immediately stop using it when it was sending the site’s resource usage through the roof. Any concerns about hosting resource issues with this plugin?
I’ve had resource usage issues with my local community site so understand the problem!
I’ve been using backupbuddy now twice a day (one I keep on the hosted server and one I ftp to another server).
Never had any problem with resource usage I’m pleased to report – the only thing you may notice is that your website loads slower whilst the backup runs but this is normal with any backup process. I reduce the impact by scheduling the backup for the middle of the night when I know there are hardly any visitors.
Definitely recommend the plugin (I also tried various others, but this is the best one-stop solution I’ve found so far)
Thanks so much for your reply Vickie! That’s very helpful. I’m going to try the plugin on some of our sites and see how it goes.
What is the difference between this backup plugin and other backup plugin which mostly used in WP ?
Other backup plugins only backup the database, where as this one can backup the whole site…
Thanks for the detailed review and I agree with everything you’ve said, especially support as they really will help you until you resolve your problems.
Just as a BTW if anyone hosts with 1&1 (I don’t recommend them!) but you will need to do a small workaround because of the way you have to force PHP 5 on their servers.
I’ve actually not used it for restoring a site yet but it’s absolutely brilliant for creating a copy of your live site on another domain do do testing on. There was a tutorial on here about moving sites from local to live and vice versa but I’ve had problems creating test sites on the internet so others can see them. Always ended up with broken links despite resorting to running update queries on the database as ended up missing some somewhere. Not sure if anyone knows another way to do this but it’s the fastest and easiest way to create a duplicate of your live site on another domain for testing.
A word of warning on the database backup plugins as I recently tried to recreate a database using one of the backups and it failed with errors saying there were duplicate records. Never got to the bottom of it so can’t blame anything but worth testing once in a while to be sure it’s all working if you’re going to rely on it.
So a great plugin and the support is great – thanks to Josh who helped me out!
What is the 1and1 workaround you mention? I’m getting a restore Php error using 1and1.
Thanks
I had never heard of BackupBuddy before.
I really appreciate you sharing.
It seems pretty easy to use. I will check it out.
I’m also going to check out Automatic WordPress Backup plugin that fanta78 recommended, after all it’s free.
- Rick
Another good (and free) backup plugin I use is Automatic WordPress Backup (http://www.webdesigncompany.net/automatic-wordpress-backup) which upload the backups to Amazon S3.
It has less functionality than your description here, but do the work nicely.
One point that you have to keep in mind is that a lot of hosting providers make backups for you everyday. Some ask a fee to but back an backup other do it for free.
So please check if your hosting provider makes backups for you or not before buying this plugin.
Good point. Though, one advantage of having your own backups separately is if your hosting company ever went bad, or somehow your account was closed or “lost” in an upgrade, you’d still have your own backups. Plus, depending on how much you value your blog’s content, an extra backup is always a great idea.
Thats also true. But one other non payed option (sorry) is to use the WP-DBManager plugin and let your backups send to your email account.
Yup, good point. I actually use that plugin on one WP site I maintain
Definitely good for small blogs…
The WP-DB Manager is a good plugin in many ways, but can be a resource hog especially for larger sites. Also, it will stop emailing bckups once they become too large. I use this plugin on several sites and it does work well for the smaller ones but I will be checking into BackupBuddy for the larger ones.
Thanks for the clear and concise article!