How To Automatically Back Up and Update a Wordpress Blog

My BIG mistake – I recently tried to make some changes to my blog without first running a back up.

Lesson Learned  - Always backup! The best way to do it is through automatic backups (let’s say once a week) and manual backups before any major work is being done on a blog.

I’ve been using the WordPress Database Backup plugin. The installation is a breeze – download the .zip file, unzip, upload to your wp-content/plugins folder and activate. Then it takes another minute or so to configure it – just select the tables you’d like to backup (when in doubt, select all), backup frequency, and where to save the backup file (server, your PC, or any e-mail address you specify).

It took me a total of maybe 5 minutes to get this plugin and set it up. Now I know that every Tuesday the backed up databases are delivered straight to my Gmail – one less thing for me to worry about.

And while I’m on the subject of super-useful WordPress plugins. Here’s another one – it’s called WordPress Automatic Upgrade. Easy to install, this plugin does all the hard work of upgrading your WordPress blog to the latest version from inside your blog. It walks you through all the steps and all you have to do is to “CLICK HERE” on each screen. No messing around with your hosting provider’s cPanel anymore!

P.S. I just timed myself as I upgraded from version 6.2 to 7 – 30 seconds (ok, I saved a few seconds by not downloading backups generated during the upgrade since I alreadyhad today’s backups delivered to my e-mail earlier in the day, thanks to the Database Backup plugin).

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