Why taking a backup copy is necessary for your blog and how to do it?
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One of the important thing in all fields in this modern world is to have a backup so that everything runs smoothly incase something fails. But this is ignored by many people (including me) when it comes to backing up the contents of your files in your computer or the contents of your blog. I learnt it hard way the importance of backing up.
My Experience
Case 1:
I first started blogging in blogspot and as it was growing, I got my own domain and I got the hosting package from eBay. Within a month the hosting company disappeared and I did not have a backup.
Case 2:
I had all my documents and photos of all my college days’ vacation and excursion in my hard disk and once my friend just wanted to try what is the content in an old floppy. It had a virus and deleted a .dll file, windows stopped working, tried to restore using recovery disks, didn’t workout, created bad sectors in hard disk and hard disk crashed. I did not have a backup here either.
Backing up the blog contents: (This applies to Wordpress only)
As I did not have any backup of my content’s with me, I managed to retrieve the latest posts from my feeds in feedburner and my old posts from blogger. I managed to retrieve the files of the themes which I have modified from the temporary folder of windows. I did manage to retrieve my content with minimal damage but if only I had the backup there would have been very less work with no panic.
In Wordpress versions before 2.1, there used to be a Wordpress database backup plugin but with the introduction of 2.1 the backup features became lot simpler. Now Wordpress gives an export file in the form of xml which is called Wordpress eXtended RSS or WXR. This contains your posts, comments, custom fields, and categories.
Export: To get the export file of your blog, go to Manage -> Export.
Choose restrict author as all to get the full backup and Click ‘Download Export File’. Save the output file in your computer.
Import: To import it back into Wordpress incase of database failure or site crash,
Go to Manage -> Import, Click on the option called ‘Wordpress’. This helps to Import posts, comments, custom fields, pages, and categories from a Wordpress export file.
Browse and select the backed-up file and upload it. Your Contents are restored.
Backing up your themes and Plugins:
Using your FTP, download the themes and plugins section under content and save it in a safe place. In case of any failure you can always use this again.
Points to Ponder and Tips on backup:
1) How frequent you take a backup of your posts depends on you. If you post everyday and get lots of comments, I would suggest taking a backup at least every other day as this won’t usually take much time.
2) Your theme and plugin sections may increase in size as days go by. So what you can do is, create a backup copy first and whenever you do some change in any file from themes or plugins save it over the copy in the backup also. By this way you can reduce the bandwidth resource and reduce the workload of downloading the whole section.
3) I am assuming that you are not hosting any files or pictures; in case you are then you have to take a backup of those as well.
4) I usually have this folder structure in my computer for taking backup, you can use this as well.
5) They may give you a backup option from a Cpanel if you are using Linux server but I find this easier. In case you find that easier, go ahead.
6) Last but not the least, the golden rule of backing up is ‘Take the backup and backup the backup’. The probability of losing the backup at the same time might be less but still there is a probability. So one might have to take a backup of backups. There are lots of free file storing sites online which you can use or store it a re-writable CD or in an extra pen drive.
I will continue this series on backing up data’s in windows XP and Vista in the next post.
If you liked this post, digg it here.
Update: Next post on this series, How to backup data in Windows XP and Vista?, How to backup important mails?
One of my blog buddies had all her image files stored on some storage site, and so inexplicably felt it was ok to delete them from her machine… and guess what happened.
Make sure you keep everything on your own system as well as online fie storage!!
[...] LyteByte have a write- up discussing how to backup your posts and comments, as well as wordpress itself along with whatever plugins and themes you’re running. [...]
[...] my earlier post I was talking about the importance of backing-up your data and how to back up your blog data. More [...]
You bought a hosting package via eBay :O
Anyway, where are you hosted now?
I run my own VPS so I have a daily, weekly and monthly autobackup on a remote FTP.
However, I take own backups once a week or two.
@Ajay
yeah I got it from eBay as it was very cheap at least for a starter. Its from indiatechplanet, good to hear that you have your VPS…Does it really cost you a lot?
Great advice, many people didn’t realize how important it isto backup (myself included), this is definitely something that I will start doing.
[...] my two earlier posts I wrote about the importance of having a backup of the contents of your blog and your computer. It’s also wise to keep a backup copy of important emails that you [...]
Any reason why you would want to leave out from backing up the comments?
@Lorna, The comments are also backed up when you use WXR. So you don’t lose anything.
Why not just backup the database.And theme files.Thats the only thing that will matter? Its easy too
I’m using Blogger. Do they have a back-up option?
[...] Why taking a backup copy is necessary for your blog – Mr.Byte [...]
@Culture Shiok!, You don’t have export option in blogger like you have in Wordpress but blogger does offer full backup of your blog contents. This is explained in blogger help.
Thanks for sharing. I had been going through myPhpAdmin to do the backups of my WP db. This is much, much easier.
This was really helpful. Now that I know how to do it, I have to go back up my stuff before Murphy’s law kicks in and erases something vital to the smooth operation of my blog.
Thanks.
[...] More about this topic can be read from here [...]
Yes… Backup is necessary… because we don’t know what will happen tomorrow
Good thing I found this post. Now I can have a complete backup. Great info, thanks.
[...] the importance of backup you can read my series of posts on doing a backup in Windows XP and Vista, backup the blog, backup important mails and in [...]