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Is there a decent free Wordpress backup plugin?
raindog308
Administrator, Veteran
in General
Looked a few and don't really like any of them.
Some don't really back up everything. UpdraftPlus is highly recommended but it only backs up some subdirectories, not the entire web root.
And several of these (including UpdraftPlus) only support a limited number of destinations. E.g., UpdraftPlus and others only allow FTP but not SFTP without buying a license.
It's not hard to write a shell or other script to dump the DB, tar up the web root, and scp it somewhere. But for less technical people, any plugin you'd recommend?
Comments
Sending file using PHP is a challenge in itself. Even using ftp, it still fails a lot. Let alone using sftp.
I am currently using shell to backup, and upload to google drive, cron it. and share the google drive folder to my less technical client.
It's ezpz with a script....
But for normal people?
1. Go to phpmyadmin and export the db
2. Go to your site's root and download the files via ftp
it's just 2 steps.....
All In One WP migration is really good. The name indicates 'migration' from one server to another, but it is a good backup tool.
1. Go to phpmyadmin and export the db
2. Go to your site's root and download the files via ftp
True, and that's a good point, but it's two manual steps. Backups are better when they're automated (and frequent).
You don't need a plugin.... backup is built into wordpress, it can backup the db...
https://i1.wp.com/wordpress.org/support/files/2018/11/wp-db-backup_settings.jpg?w=977&ssl=1
Make an sh files that rsyncs the whole folder, the db should be in there once you enabled backups
It's just ONE command
EDIT: it's not built in to wp, i was wrong about my link, i thought that was a wordpress.org site, but I made a script that does the following for you
make a tarball out of your db & site root & upload via ftp
Any plugin that will dump your sql to a folder will do
the good thing is that this isn't hard
Backup software should be decoupled from what its backing up. mysqldump + git works wonders for something as simple as this. You can pull DB credentials with WP-CLI's
config
option.They don't really need to know how to write a shell script; they just need to know how to run the script...
Thanks to Softaculous. I use it for almost all my client sites backup. I take weekly backups with 4 or more rotations. Means it will delete a backup and rewrite with a new one after 4 weeks.
Checkout wpvivid plugin from @BoldBaatar
I am happy with Duplicator (free version, just local backups)
@raindog308 I have been using backWPup and its been great. Copies backups to AWS S3 and Dropbox
https://backwpup.com/ (I am using the free version)
@Asim! Long time no see.
Gave up on plugins.
Put everything inside a git repo, and run a mysqldump every hour and check it in and push it up to free hosted bitbucket repo. (Run as a separate Docker container which exposes Prometheus metrics which alerts if no backup is made in the last few hours.)
Give XCloner a try. I stumbled upon it because I use Koofr Cloud Storage and they made a blog post about using XCloner together with Koofr's Webdav. XCloner has lots of features and is entirely free. Only support is paid: https://wordpress.org/plugins/xcloner-backup-and-restore/
The dropbox backup is free
Hey @Ympker cheers for the link, looks quite cool. Have you used it?
A snapshot of the vps to save it all. API to automate it.
But then you're depending on that VPS provider. What if they go bust? Hard to restore the backup elsewhere.
I use updraftplus free and save my backup to gdrive for several years.. it's working and I can restore if needed, but if backup file is too large it will be better to download the backup file to the server and restore from local
Personally I just use a bash script that gets installed in CRON to dump the DB and backup the web files that the WP directory is installed in, then zip it all together and store it on a separate drive.
I tried updraft plus and found it didn't get everything - you get the DB dump, and the plugins/themes/uploads directories, but not things like the web root, your wp-settings file, etc.
Some vps providers allow you to download image. If PHP is allowed to do backup of itself then all the nasty things might show up.
Your probably looking for this:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/boldgrid-backup/
Backs up the entire wordpress directory and your wordpress database.
Has restore from backup built right into it.
Also can set it to backup daily.
If you are below 512MB WP All In One Migration is fairly nice as it can easily be restore.
For above the limit I would write a script to handle these backups.
Back WP Up has worked fine for me - and it is free.
My 2c on Back WP up.
However, backups should really be done by the server, not having an application back itself up.
Currently using JetBackup on cPanel hosting for backups and it works fine, storing backups on Backblaze b2 storage (cheap and so far reliable).
While DirectAdmin has its own backup that works fine, though requiring some FTP (SFTP, FTPS), not integrated with Backblaze B2.
Yes, I've used it a couple of times. It works.
I especially tried https://koofr.eu/blog/posts/how-to-restore-your-wordpress-xcloner-backup-from-koofr-via-webdav
Have you had a look at XCloner yet? From my understanding it should also be able to save web root (even though I never tried that).
akeeba
UpdraftPlus is the most popular free WordPress backup plugin available on the internet. It is used by more than 2 million websites. UpdraftPlus allows you to create a complete backup of your WordPress site and store it on the cloud or download to your computer.
@raindog308 Use akeeba backup. Since several years, the great joomla plugin has a port for WP and can work fully automatically, with a... trick (a frontend url that can be triggered via a cron). Of course, its paid version can work more automatically (using backend settings) but the free version is working also like a charm.
The best part is that, Angie (the restore script) can fix all the WP database strings when Wp is restored in different server with different paths and/or different domain.