How Often Should You Backup Your Blog?

Mara sent in this excellent question,

“How often should you do a thorough backup of a blog? I have the backup that Wordpress has set up to backup daily. However, I’m sure there’s something I should do with all the rest of it, right?”

I commend you for taking action to back up your blog. It wasn’t so difficult right?

How often depends how active your blog is. If you post daily or several times a day every day, then daily is probably right. But if your posting schedule is weekly, there is no reason to put that load on your web server. So a weekly backup schedule works.

The key thing to know is, don’t wait too long between each backup. If you post daily, then a weekly backup schedule won’t help you so much. It will still be better than no backup, but the idea is to try to grab the freshest data as possible. Matching your backup schedule to your posting schedule is probably the best.

What else should you do? Backup the WordPress files itself. In particular, the wp-config.php file and the wp-content folder. The Database Backup Plugin only grabs your data (content) but not the themes (design). If you have done a lot of work to your theme or installed a lot of plugins - and most of us have – , it’s wise to keep a copy of it.

How to do it? This video will help you out. Keep those questions coming in.

Last 5 posts by Lynette Chandler

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