Using BackupBuddy from iThemes to backup my site is a lot like using Carbonite to back up my hard drive. Once my settings are in place, I know I’m protected and can easily recover everything.
BackupBuddy is a premium WordPress Plugin that backs up your website or blog– not just your posts, but your theme, widgets, plugins and SQL database. This is superior to any other backup plugins out there because BackupBuddy will actually restore your site to its former state. You won’t have to reconfigure your widgets or wonder what was there. Just follow the instructions to get quickly back online.
I’ve had BackupBuddy installed on my site and any sites I maintain for over a year now and recently upgraded to the new 2.0 version that includes even more and better features. I’ll highlight the ones I find most important below.
BackupBuddy Features
- schedule regular backups for database only or a full backup
- tell BackupBuddy to email you upon successful (or unsuccessful) backup
- tell BackupBuddy where you want your backup sent. Choices are: Amazon S3, Rackspace Cloud, an FTP/FTPS account, or your email.
- ability to completely restore my site (they have great instructions & video tutorials in addition to the best support).
- ability to migrate my site. So if I wanted to move to a different host, or if I wanted to build a new site and get it all ready while leaving my old one up, this makes it easy.
- a malware scanner to let me know if something bad is on my site. It also gives me several screens full of details about what versions of software I’m running, links, any errors and even if my domain is blacklisted
- server information that lets me know if my host is up to date on their settings and software
If you’ve invested time and/or money in a website or blog, why wouldn’t you take the same precautions as you do with the data on your hard drive? (You do have your hard drive backed up, don’t you?) There are so many things that could happen…your site could become infected, an upgrade could go very wrong, a plugin could mess things up…spend a few bucks for insurance and peace of mind, you’ll be glad you did.