Website Backup: Keep Your Site Safe, Instantly Clone Your Blog, and Get Things Done Anywhere
1. Setup a backup of your ENTIRE account or your ENTIRE server in cPanel/WHM. Do this long before anything goes wrong... preferably one that automatically runs once per week and backs up via FTP to an offsite server... email your web host if you need help setting this up.
Seriously, don't even bother with any automatic WordPress backup plugins, just backup your ENTIRE account... this makes sure all your files, databases, email accounts, and everything is kept safe... not just your WordPress blog.
2. Backup your desktop files on a G-Safe redundant external drive and using offsite backup service Carbonite. Don't store everything on a memory stick or your computer's hard drive... it WILL fail eventually.
3. Install Roboform Everywhere on your computer. This software stores all your passwords in the cloud so it can sync with all your computers including your laptop and smartphone. You also don't have to spend 30 seconds logging into every website. If you only logged into 10 websites per day (think Facebook, email, your membership site, forum, someone else's membership site, YouTube, Twitter, a news site, another forum, and your hosting account) that's 5 minutes per day, which is 30 hours per year you're saving.
An added bonus is that it will auto-generate every password for every site for you... so you use a "master password" to let Roboform do its thing, but it fills out an extremely hard to guess password... and it uses a different password for every single site.
4. Bookmark each of your login pages and membership sites in your browser, organize them in folders, and use Firefox Sync to back it all up. I save my most visited sites in my "bookmarks toolbar" that appears at the top of my browser window. On this toolbar, I have:
- one bookmarks folder for News Headlines
- one bookmarks folder for Forums
- one bookmarks folder for Classes (recurring membership sites)
- one bookmarks folder for Products (standalone membership sites)
- one bookmarks folder for Dashboard sites (for travel, Google Website Optimizer, EzineArticles, and other training I'm taking
- one bookmarks folder for cPanel (site backends I login to)
5. Install the Maintenance Mode plugin on your blogs and WordPress membership sites in case you need to take them offline quickly. This is a free plugin you can install from your WordPress dashboard where you can take your entire site offline to outside visitors in one click... useful if you are tweaking your theme or if a plugin fails.
When does all of this come in handy? Last night I needed to take about 20 sites down in a hurry while a problem was fixed overnight... so you know what I did?
- I went to the "Classes" folder on my Firefox bookmarks toolbar, right clicked, and chose "Open in All Tabs" ... this opened each of my membership sites in a different tab
- I logged into each of these sites with 1-click using Roboform
- Enabled the Maintenance Mode plugin on each of these sites
And there you go, in a couple minutes, temporarily took my sites down so I could fix them.
What's your best tip to keep your business running smoothly?
Filed in: Membership Sites
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Five very good tips, Robert.
Occasionally I get paid a very hefty fee to rebuild software or websites because a client did not back up regularly. And always an excuse, “We had a system in place, but it broke down for a couple of weeks.” Yeah, right.
It’s so much easier to back it up daily. And a product like Carbonite makes it automatic.
Rich,
But really… “every day I floss, run 20 miles, do 1000 pushups, eat bran cereal, wake up at 3AM, drink 5 gallons of water” … I just stopped doing it for a couple of weeks 🙂
Backups aren’t that exciting, but everyone needs to set them up, and like you said, it’s all automatic once you get it going.
For backing up wordpress blogs, I create an entire backup file that you can then re-install on a fresh WP installation, should anything ever go wrong.
I’ve been recently attacked by extremist islamist hackers. I noticed it 1 week after and my hosting account do not provide any backup more than 1 week old.
So I’ve entirely lost my blog
These safety steps are crucial!
Thanks
Francisco,
Uh oh, that’s not good!
I’m surprised how many people expect their web host to backup their data for them. Unless you get REALLY lucky, you’re on your own and have to setup your own backups… and you need to backup your backups… meaning if you just backup your web site to your desktop, that’s not enough… you need to backup the desktop offsite too.
Robert,
I was already doing everything on this list. I was also right in the middle of doing module 201 in Make a Product 2.0 when the site went down, that was a bummer.
I learned these lessons a little while ago and set up the steps you mentioned above because of what I learned from that experience. I use slightly different software and services because I use a Mac or I chose different providers but the principles are the same.
I use Bluehost to host my sites and they have an automatic 24 hour backup system set up and they back up all my files automatically once a day. They overwrite them with each backup but I would only lose a single days data in the event of a loss and because i backup my own individual sites I would probably not lose even that .
I also use a WordPress backup plugin to back up my wordpress sites onto my server every three days.
I use Time machine for my files on my Mac, again its automatic but I still check its working everytime i switch on my mac.
I use 1Password for my site logins, the same as roboform but again originally for the mac, but they now do a windows version.
I use Dropbox as my external storage hard drive.
I use a similar system as you in Firefox for my logins, particularly for sites set up in wordpress.One click opens them all in firefox.
And i have the maintenance mode plugin installed on all my blogs.
My best tip for keeping my business running is to take this advice, its great advice and comes from experience, something that you should never ignore.
Thanks Robert.
Kevin
Kevin and Joe,
Is there a reason you guys use a WordPress backup plugin? Why don’t you back up your entire hosting account?
Great tips!
I’ve been using Roboform for many years – I couldn’t live without it (of course, I could, but it’d be really challenging 🙂 )
I love your idea of Bookmarking each log-in page – I usually rely on my memory, or look it up on Roboform (which is still hard, if you don’t remember the name of the site you want to log in to).
Thanks for the great info!
E.G.,
I used to be the same way… I wouldn’t bookmark anything… I wouldn’t save any passwords… until I realized I probably only login to about 50 sites at the very most on any given day (usually less than 5) and it’s way easier, less repetitive, and less aggravating to just go “click, click, click” instead of typing 30 or so keystrokes for the URL, 10 keystrokes for the username, 10 keystrokes for the password… would you rather hit 50 buttons over and over or click 3 times? It’s one of those things where you don’t realize how much time you were wasting until you start using bookmarks and roboform.
Regarding #1: what exactly does “backing up to an offsite server mean” ?
For example my host is Hostgator, so i should back up all the files Hostgator hosts for me on another server ?
But where ?
To another host ?
An online backup service ?
Please explain.
Thanks in advance
ciao
Alexander
Alexander,
I have a second web host for backups, a totally different host in a totally different part of the country. You can configure your cPanel to login to that other FTP server, and dump the backup there.
Hi Robert
Thanks for pointing this out. I am currently updating from 4.x PHP to a server running 5.2, but when that is in place, I shall most definitely follow your advice.
Very helpful and a real time-saver. [You now have one extra to add to the many timesavers you wrote about a while back. :-)]
Keep writing. Always nice to read what you write. 🙂
All great ideas and suggestions however I have a difference of opinion with respect to item 1.
Most web hosts with unlimited storage have policies against storing backups on the hosting site. Most of my websites are WordPress sites and so I schedule regular daily database backups and weekly full backups to happen automatically with the backup files being sent to Amazon S3 upon completion. I use a very versatile WordPress premium backup solution called BackupBuddy which automates every aspect of the backup and either restore or migration to a new server. BackupBuddy will also backup non WordPress directories and files.
Amazon S3 storage is dirt cheap and I am able to store 15 website with 18 backup files each for less than $1.00 per month. The data is kept on the Amazon servers and so is off site and I will never be at the mercy of my hosting service for any reason.
I use the free version of Google Apps to create and store email which frees me from the hassle of having to run a mail server. I am able to have up to 10 user accounts per organization and up to 7GB of storage for each user. Google Apps has a near 100% uptime and is fully web enabled. One Google App account can easily have multiple domain names associated with it.
Just my 2 cents.
David Perednia
David, does that “storage” rule apply to dedicated servers as well? You can use one of those for not even 100 bucks a month.
Hey Robert,
Have you considered talking to people about WordPress backup plugins? I use one of these nifty little tools every single day. It is like three clicks to completely clone and reinstall an entire blog. If you have not tried it you should. I back up my sites by making a clone…the clone is an exact duplicate of the original site. I can then go to any URL that has WordPress and deploy it and in about ten seconds everything has been duplicated over…its like magic.
What are your thoughts?
Jason
Jason,
I ask you the same question I asked Kevin and Joe… why backup just the blog, why not the whole site? And are you setting up WordPress so often that you need to use a tool to clone it?
Robert,
It backs up the entire site…for instance I can back up everything on my membership site in about 30 seconds and redeploy it at a moments notice.
As for why would I want to clone a site (aside from the back up feature) I create niche sites…just a few a week and it makes it easy as pie. No more uploading plugins, activating them, typing in reg keys, etc etc
Jason
Which is this plugin Jason ?
Jason,
Do you sell these blog backups or install them as part of a service to others?
Robert,
There is a nice little discussion going on here. My backup solution of choice is BackUpBuddy. You can backup your entire site. WordPress files and/or database files. You can even have it setup to backup automatically and sent to either Amazon S3, Rackspace, another server or if small enough an email account. If you want to migrate to another server you can do that as well. I can have a new site up in no time that is a CLONE of a site I keep everything updated on with my default plugins.
Hey Arelthia,
Do you include information about backups in one of your courses? And where do you personally send your backups? S3?
Robert,
I install them as a part of a service for others.
Jason
p.s. plus I use them to create niche sites for myself. I have a basic install of wordpress with all my favorite plugins installed and activated, some SEO tweaks made, etc. Pretty much everything but the content (because that will be different for each site). Then I can clone instead of spending an hour setting everything up myself.
Great post, Robert.
I do just about all of this.
I do also use a wordpress back up plugin (even though the whole server is backed up), and I have it copy to amazon S3.
Just an extra layer of backup…
I do back up my PC locally and on Carbonite… I came to this after another hard drive crash.
I hope people listen to you.
Kenny
Robert,
I’ve had more than one client warned about storing large archives, zip or backup files on shared servers or VPS systems. Perhaps as storage has become cheaper over the years these restrictions may not be as strict.
Dedicated servers do not have that problem since you are paying for the server and a certain fixed hardware. How you use that hardware is up to you. If you need more storage the host is happy to charge you for it.
You are still better off storing your backups off site or on a remote system from your server for security and safety sake.
Robert I just created a video on how to backup your site using BackupBuddy For CreateAWebsiteKit.com. I send my backups to S3. When I am working on sites for clients that are smaller I always backup first and just save those to DropBox.
My hosting company assured me they did regular back ups, every three days. To my dismay, I got hacked recently by a Saudi hacker and after paying $15 to have the site restored, got a site that was back at the “brand new domain stage”. Now when I do a cpanel back up I have a copy emailed to me. Rebuildinng from the ground up sucks! But then it is also an opportunity, to make new and better changes. I am looking at OptimizePress to revamp a couple of sites, Will the cpanel backup be good enough for that or should I look at something else? And What about storing back ups of membership sites on Amazon S3, how secure is it? I am looking at building my first membership site and weighing options.
What is a “G-Safe redundant external drive” ?
http://www.xcloner.com this one is free and does all that. sends direct to amazon as well.
Sorry to post again, but, these plugins like that need to be deleted after each use, this is the problem, but, if you done, a huge risk is involved.
Thank You one and all for your comments, I have been reading them with great interest. Robert, where can I find a training video on how to backup wordpress sites and the associated plugins and how to create and transfer data to amazon S3 ?
What about using a program which backs up everythings and can be restored anywhere?
Just be careful with WP backup plugins. As I was researching backup solutions I found that most of the popular ones backup the DATABASE, but ignore the plugins and all those other lovely tweaks you labored over for your blog. There are proper solutions, but Caveat Emptor!
Robert can you maybe help us to protect our membership sites from hacker attacks actively? WordPress membership sites seem to be very vulnerable.
Doing backup is indeed one of crucial things one can do, but that’s passive defense only.
I’m sure Robert you know more tricks to prevent hacker attacks actively before it actually happens.
Anyway thanks for good post Robert.
I agree about backing up everything and not just WordPress databases etc.
I had my hosting account hacked and the perpetrator ran a script that attached malicious code to every index.php, index.html and *.js it could find. With a lot of domains, it turned out to be nearly 1000 affected files.
Simply re-installing WordPress would have fixed a lot of them, but that wouldn’t fix affected plugins etc., or non-WP files.
Recovering a complete backup was a lot easier and was just one simple operation, and guaranteed not to miss any files.
Being a professional software engineer, I’m used to doing regular backups, so I had my backup system in place from day 1 when I set up my hosting account.
I clone all my sites… and set up one that I am going to use to multiply on about a few others.. set it all up with the plugins and seo etc, i have my own style template as well, then twin it onto the other sites, go in and change the content and headers etc.. then twin each one when its finished.
What I would like then is a backup that will backup each week to cover any changes etc or additions. Am looking at backupbuddy and have researched a few plugsin.. have the wordpress one going that does the lot at the moment till I get some spare time (yeah right!!!) to find the best solution that is easy for a blonde, and once set up it runs itself.
I have an Amazon3 account so thats a good idea.
thanks
I was using a cloning tool to back up each individual blog.
If I wanted it to be done automatically, you needed to pay an additional $47. It would have been nice to know this before since I spent $77 on this cloning tool.
The manual tool required me to set it up for each website I own which was never fun.
How exactly do we backup our entire ftp account?
As to WordPress backups…
While I think a cPanel backup is a good idea, the only problem I see with a cPanel backup is that some parts of a WordPress installation will store absolute file paths in the database and if you need to reinstall at a different host, or the same host on a different server, you may have to reconfigure a few things.
I bought WordPress cloning software but it wouldn’t work on my host, so I wrote wpSiteCopy to do the same thing on more hosts. I can do a backup which includes all the plugins, themes, database and even WordPress files, and it installs wherever you need it, including cloning to start a new site. And it fixes all those pathing things in the database.
And as Francisco pointed out… you may have to go back to a backup that’s older than a week.
As to passwords…
Robo is fine. I like LastPass. Partly because, for most folks, it’s free.
The most important thing…
Think about security and backups. You will get hit sometime. It’s far better to be prepared than not.
Hi Robert…
Personally I use Carbonite for my computer, but regarding my website… thats a whole other story.
I’ve lost my website TWO times in one year due to hacking – very frustrating. Once before I used WordPress, and once after I started using WordPress..
After the second time, I invested in WP-BackupBuddy… I used it on two diff. sites. A small one and a bigger one. On the small one it works fine, but on the bigger one I couldn’t get it to make a complete backup.. So, my final solution became…
…VaultPress, WordPress’ own backup service. A little expensive, but WHAT A PEACE OF MIND IT GIVES…! 🙂
I’ve used for a while now, and I must say am VERY satisfied with it.
But Robert, let me use this opportunity to thank you for all the great posts and inspiration you delivers… THANKS!
Best wishes from me..
Uffe Kirkegaard
Hey Robert this is a very important discussion! Backup is such an administrative kind of task that it’s easy to overlook in the press of other priorities. But the thing is, what is it going to cost me if I lose all my work? I don’t even want to think about that!
I love love love your suggestions (some of them I already knew and have been doing) — but others are completely new to me and I want to add them now.
One additional comment I’d like to make concerns security; you can never be too confident about how secure your data or sites are, no matter how robust your hosting account is. The hackers are out there plotting while we sleep, and sooner or later you can be a target, even if your site is not in a top Alexa rank and you can’t imagine why anyone would want to hack you. They still can and often will!
Pay attention to the security warnings from WP and other reliable sources as soon as you see them, and keep your software and plugins updated. That’s a given.
Any other tips on security are appreciated! A community that stands together is stronger than each one of us trying to fight off the bad guys all by ourselves 🙂
Great post, Robert. From a newbie’s perspective, the information being shared is good, and overwhelming. Since you all are the experts, what is the consensus as to the best tool(s) to use to backup an entire website: databases and all the other files, plugins, and images?
I would also like to know what is the best, if there is, password manager. I currently use Robo. And a good and secure way to transfer files to the cloud: Amazon S3, or any of the other cloud systems.
Thanks to all who contributed on this post.
I so totally agree with all that you have suggested and follow these guidelines as close to the letter as I can. Sometimes I get overly carried away and leave out a step but then I remember and go back to fix it.
Keeping track of dozens of websites can be annoying at times but I love doing it.
Without Roboform I would be totally lost. Been using it for a very long time and highly recommend it. It is so easy to set up and use. Now they have it set so that you can sync it everywhere.
I am now using a brand new system backup called Digital Lifeboat and it is doing a full system backup for Free on an unlimited backup space. Can’t get any better than that now can you?
SecureLive.net is something that I would also highly recommend if you are truly concerned about security. It is one of the finest security systems I have ever used.
Hackers hates this security.
I sure love being part of the internet community. Have fun and stay safe everyone.
I have used BackupBuddy for a couple of years now, really ever since it came out. It is a great product – and I really like it – but I have discovered that it is a bit narrow in its scope and capability and a bit more expensive than a new alternative that I am experimenting with called GD Press Tools – which also supports WPMU installations, supports of course S3, rackspace etc. and helps manage site security, site debugging, xml site mapping, meta tag mant., and apparently they are about to release a blow ’em out of the water set of new backup/restore capabilities. So, I’m hoping it becomes my standard tool for general site maint including backup. Less plugins is good – I say.
Best,
Paulette C.
Expert Career Marketing Specialist
MyExpertsNetwork™ Community (open invite)
http://myexpertsnetwork.net/get-invited
I am not a technie, but agree with David as far as backupbuddy and S3 is concerned.
However I did face a dilemma of hacking and viruses, and mere restores did nothing. My host had to totally delete account and I had to start from scratch.
Charity starts at home, as does security.
Having said that, explore all possible ways of securing your online business. I toke it more granted and paid the price.
Thank you for sharing valuable information as well as my fellow contributors.
This is a great post with a ton of helpful information.
I hear lots of horror stories of people losing all the ‘stuff’ and I can’t imagine what I would do if I lost the content on my computer. I have my files backed up regularly, but it saves the file to my computer. I think from this post, I need to rethink that plan.
I also save project folders and PDF’s to an external hard drive, both to save a copy and also so that I can travel with a smaller computer that does not have the info I am working on at any given moment.
Thank you for this great information and helping me to step back and look at my plan. (time to course correct!)
xox
@HelenRappy
Robert and everyone else great post and feedback.
I lost a big article directory site many years ago because my host didn’t back up databases and sadly neither did I. Since then I regularly back up my sites, BUT I had saved them to my computer.
Well guess what? My computer died just last week, so now I have a new empty computer no emails – no backups – no software I’ve bought. Thank God I had just uploaded a beta version of my plugin or I would have lost it too.
I did have a year old cd with some stuff, but very little, not even close to what I lost.
I have no idea what assigned passwords are on several sites because I just used Firefox ‘remember’ passwords. I of course can try my dozen or so regular pw’s but usually get locked out after 3 tries, or try my different email addresses trying the forgot password – what a pain.
I believe Hostgator (shared) only allows one complete backup so I don’t think weekly or even monthly backups are an option.
Time for me to setup a cloud (S3) for backups and install Robo!
@Helen get it off your computer and someplace safe today!
Yep, this is a reality check.
We had sites hacked a year or so ago and the host had no backu so now backup our sites ourselves using plugins and the files emailed to a gmail account so storage hasn’t been a problem. Mostly though that’s dbases so our sales pages etc are at risk … need to sort that.
After a hard drive failure two weeks ago (which stored our computer backups) we’re now looking at backing up in the cloud but the sync is driving us insane so we disabled that and just send the file at least once a week.
WP Maintenance mode is a handy plugin to employ when needed so thanks for that tip.
Moral of the story – plan for the worst, just in case.
I’ve been keeping an eye on the comments here. For those who are concerned about full site backups I would like to offer a solution. iDrive.com or even aDrive.com which offers 2 gb for free and you can use their plugin to do a total site back up for free and of course if you feel you need a little more space it really doesn’t cost that much and it could be a bit less expensive than S2 and somewhat less hassle to set up & maintain.
As for security. I’ve found 2 options. http://www.securelive.net and http://www.websitedefender.com. The first one cost a little but is well worth it and the 2nd one is in beta mode but seems to do a very good job. Could be worth your time to check both of these out.
Hope everyone is having a great time this summer. I know I am.
Oh yeah I forgot to mention that the new version of wishlist does a full system backup which you can download plus leave on the server. It is a great new feature that has not been mentioned much.
Just trialling ManageWp.com to administer all wp sites in one platform – it looks very good so far AND has an auto backup of your sites which is posted on your server. Might be worth a look – it’s in beta mode so free at the moment.