At WPBackItUp we strive to make backing up your WordPress site as simple as possible. We know that you have more important things to do than spend a lot of time figuring out how to backup your site. We also know that you want a single button that backs up all your content and stores it in a safe place just in case you ever need it. We know this because we use WPBackItUp to backup all our WordPress sites, including this one. This short article describes WPBackItUp’s backup features and how to use them.
Dashboard
Once installed WPBackItUp can easily be found in the WordPress dashboard navigation. Just click the WPBackItUp option and you will be directed to the backup section. In this section you will be able to run manual backups, input your license and view a list of all your backup archives.
Manual Backups
Manual backups may be performed by clicking the backup button which can be found in the backup section of WPBackItUp. That’s it really, just click the button and let WPBackItUp do the hard work for you.
Status related information may be found at the bottom of the page so you know exactly where we are in the process.
While the backup is running you may minimize the page and work on something more interesting like catching up on your emails or playing solitaire. When the backup has completed you will see a completion message reflected in the status section.
That’s it! Do this once a month, week or even daily, and don’t worry we never charge extra for backups. Licensed users of WPBackItUp may store as many archives as desired on their hosting provider’s server, however, we recommend doing some cleanup once in a while.
Status Updates
Backups are boring, we know that, so if you want to do something more interesting while your backup is running, then just add your email address to the status updates option and WPBackItUp will send you a status email when your backup is done.
Remind Me – Coming Soon
Can’t remember to perform your backups, well neither can we. Why not sign up for our automated backup reminder email. We will email you weekly or monthly reminders to backup your WordPress site. Don’t worry you can unsubscribe at any time.
Save Your Backups Somewhere Safe
All your backup archives should be downloaded and stored somewhere safe. The Backup section of the plugin displays a list of all your backups with your last one at the top of the list. Clicking the download icon will save it to your desktop.
We recommend doing this for every backup and saving it somewhere safe like Dropbox or google drive. In the near future we will be adding a feature to perform this step for you so stay tuned.
Cleanup Your Server
While you may leave as many backups as you want on your hosting provider’s server, we recommend that you do some cleanup every once in a while. Some hosts have very limiting disk quotas so saving a lot of backups will use up your limited space.
Why not use the WPBackItUp retention setting to tell WPBackItUp how many backups you would like to be on your host. Once you set it WPBackitup will handle the cleanup for you.
Automated Backups
Don’t want to even click the button; we feel the same way. Create scheduled backups for your site from with WPBackItUp scheduled backups. Backups may be performed daily or weekly. Simply select the days of the week you would like backups to be performed. WPBackItUp will perform your backups on the days you requested and will even send you an email to let you know it has been completed. No need to even think about it anymore.
When using automated backups, we recommend also setting the number of archives to be stored on our hosting provider’s server.