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Your WordPress database contains every post, every comment and every link you have on your blog. If your database gets erased or corrupted, you stand to lose everything you have written. There are many reasons why this could happen and not all are things you can control. But what you can do is back up your data. After all, it is important. Right?
Below are instructions to back up your WordPress Site and your WordPress Database. In addition, support is provided online at the WordPress Support Forum to help you through the process.
Making backups is essential because problems inevitably occur and you need to be in a position to take action when disaster strikes. Spending a few minutes to make an easy, convenient backup of your database will allow you to spend even more time being creative and productive with your website.
Back up your database regularly, and always before an upgrade.
That depends on how often you blog, how often you want to do this, and how you would feel if your database were lost along with a few posts. It is your decision.
Yes. And you should. Backups are good.
Excellent question. Most people make a backup and then just replace it every time. It saves space and is less to worry about. But what if that backup file is corrupted or lost? Then what? The general rule of thumb is to keep at least three backups and keep them in three different places or forms, like floppies, CDs, different hard drives, web disk, your e-mail account, etc.
Possibly. Typically, anti-spam and statistics plugins can add large amounts of data and because they are constantly gathering information, the database can swell significantly. When backing up the database, such information is probably not important to keep. Do not mark those tables for backup when selecting them during the backup process.
Yes. There are several methods of automating the backup process available, but back up those auto backups with a manual backup every once in a while to guarantee that the process is working. See Backup Resources for more information.
The following are general documents for helping you to back up and restore your WordPress data.
There are two parts to backing up your WordPress site: Database and Files. You need to back up the entire site, and you need to back up your WordPress database. Below are instructions for backing up your WordPress database for various server programs. We will start with backing up the rest of your WordPress Site.
Your WordPress site consists of the following:
All of these are used in various combinations to generate your website. The database contains your posts and a lot of data generated on your site, but it does not include the above elements that all come together to create the look and information on your site. These need to be saved.
Most hosts back up the entire server, including your site, but it takes time to request a copy of your site from their backups, and a speedy recovery is critical. You need to learn how to back up your own site files and restore them. Here are some methods.
Most website hosts provide software to back up your site. Check with your host to find out what services and programs they provide.
2Bright Sparks's Syncback and WinSCP are programs which allow you to sync with your website to keep a mirror copy of the content on your server and hard drive updated. It saves time and makes sure you have the latest files in both places.
Using FTP Clients or UNIX Shell Skills you can copy the files to a folder on your computer. Once there, you can zip or compress them into a zip file to save space, allowing you to keep several versions.
Remember, keep at least three backups on file, just in case one is corrupted or lost, and store them in different places and on different mediums, like CD, DVD, different hard drives, etc.
Back up your WordPress database regularly, and always before an upgrade or move to a new location. The following information will help you back up your WordPress database using various popular server software packages. For detailed information, contact your website host for more information on the program, control panel, and resources they provide.
phpMyAdmin is one of the most popular database management systems found on most website hosts. You will need to know where it is and how to access it on your website host's interface or control panel. We have provided information on accessing phpMyAdmin below.
phpMyAdmin is used by site administrators to manage and interact with their MySQL databases. During the installation process, you probably accessed mySQL through phpMyAdmin to create your WordPress Database and set up the password. WordPress stores all of its information in the MySQL database and phpMyAdmin provides the interface to access that data.
While familiarity with phpMyAdmin is not necessary to back up your WordPress database, these instructions should take you step-by-step through the process of finding phpMyAdmin on your server and then you can follow the instructions below as a simple and easy backup or for more detailed instructions see Backing Up Your Database.
On your main control panel for cPanel, look for the MySQL logo and click the link to MySQL Databases. On the next page, look for phpMyAdmin link and click it to access your phpMyAdmin.
From Your Account page, look for MySQL Management and click it to access phpMyAdmin.
Look for the MySQL Admin logo and click the link. Under Configuration choose MySQL Administration Tool.
Click the button for Databases. Then choose the link to the WordPress database you setup during the WordPress installation. Then click on the button for phpMyAdmin.
From the main control panel, click Host Manager, then click Databases. In the next window, click Admin. Another window will popup taking you to the phpMyAdmin login screen.
Login to your Ferozo Control Panel by using your credentials. Once inside, go to the “Base de Datos” (“Data Base”) menu and then click on “Acceso phpMyAdmin” (“Access phpMyAdmin”). A new window will open displaying the phpMyAdmin login screen.
The following is a very simple version of how to use phpMyAdmin to back up your WordPress database. For more detailed information see WordPress Backups and Backing Up Your Database. Once you have discovered how to access your site's phpMyAdmin, follow these simple instructions.
Begin by clicking database in your phpMyAdmin panel.
You may have several databases. Click the one that holds your WordPress data, the database you created when you installed WordPress.
This shows only default tables. You may have more tables -- this would happen if you have any statistics plugins or anti-spam plugins.
Keep these files safe !
For more information on the WordPress Backup Week or to volunteer, see: WordPress Backup Week.