* UPDATE *

I have now adopted a new system of making my backups, and I believe this is the best way to make WordPress backups at the moment. For my system you need two plugins:

1. BackupBuddy
2. WP-DBManager

Before you start wondering, there is a reason why I am using two plugins instead of one. I recommend WP-DBManager in any case to optimise your database periodically, while I also use it to email backups to me as it is more flexible in this area than BackupBuddy. More on this later.

The backup process is simple. I create a hosting account which will store all my backups. Inside the FTP account I will create different folders for all the websites I’ll be backing up. So it will look like this:

public_html/
/site1backup
/site2backup

Take note of all this account’s details as you will need to input them when setting up BackupBuddy.

Once you install BackupBuddy (I know it’s not free, but it’s by far the best and well worth the money you spend on it), go to the ‘Settings’ screen and enter the FTP details of the backup account we have just created one step earlier. Also set email address for notifications if you need that. Then go to ‘Scheduling’ and setup your backup. I opt for a daily database backup and a weekly full backup. Both will be transferred to FTP and I opt not to have a backup kept on the server. That’s all as regards to BackupBuddy.

My backups set up on BackuBuddy

I also like to have a copy of the database emailed to me every day, so I set up a specific email address that will be used only to receive these database backups. I then use WP DBManager (free plugin)  to send the database backups daily. Go to ‘DB Options’ and set up your scheduling there. As you can see this plugin allows you to choose the email address to which you want the database backups sent, something which is not so convenient to set up with BackupBuddy. BackupBuddy sends both notifications and database backups to the same email account, which I don’t particularly like. I would prefer to have a choice for both, as I would need to have notifications delivered to my day-to-day email account and the database backups themselves to a separate email account.

WP DB Manager Scheduling screen

Hope that helps you if you need a WordPress backup solution. Please leave a comment if you need any more help on this. I am also leaving the contents of the previous article below in case you want to check out some other backup related plugins that I had mentioned in it. However I don’t use them anymore and now use the above described backup system for all my WordPress websites.

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* ORIGINAL POST – UPDATED ABOVE *

Backing up your WordPress-based website or blog is essential. We have some options in this regard when it comes to plugins. Automattic should also be releasing a paid service called VaultPress soon.

So, onto the plugins, here are the best plugins I’ve found for taking backups of WordPress:

Database-Only Backup

WP-DB-Backup by Il Filosofo

WP Database backup allows you to backup all, or a selction of your MYSQL tables, and have that backup saved to your hosting server, downloaded or sent via email.   Like WordPress backup there is a scheduler but there is also an on-demand function, useful if you want a quick back before a change to your blog.

WP-DBManager by Lester Chan * My favourite among these two, due to a better interface

Allows you to optimize database, repair database, backup database, restore database, delete backup database , drop/empty tables and run selected queries. Supports automatic scheduling of backing up and optimizing of database.

Files Backup

WordPress Backup by Blog Traffic Exchange

This is a great little plugin which takes a copy of my plugin, theme and upload directories and copies them into a directory under wp-content as a zip file.  The zip file is then sent out via email.

I have this set to run once a week, but you can set it to daily or monthly.  There is no on-demand option.

To restore from this backup, unzip the files and FTP them back to your host.

Database + Files Backup

BackWPup by Daniel Hüsken * This would be my favourite in this category if all the features worked well

This Plugin is still under heavy development but seems promising. Plugin Requires PHP 5. I quite like the features of this plugin, it also allows you to send the backup to another ftp account. However it seems to still need some polishing. I set it up to backup all files and database but it only backed up my database. Will keep tabs on this plugin to see where it goes in the future.

It offers the following features:

• Database Backup
• Optimize Database
• Check\Repair Database
• File Backup
• Uses PCLZIP class of WordPress
• Store backup to Folder
• Store backup to FTP Server
• Store backup to Amazon S3
• Send Log/Backup by eMail

Automatic WordPress Backup

Backs up your full blog to the Amazon S3 Service

What Else?

My complete WordPress install i.e. wp-includes, wp-admin and the files in my blog root are not backed up by these two plugins so I keep a copy of my latest WordPress install files to hand, just in case.

Restoring Your Backup

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/02/12/testing-your-blog-backup.