Easily Create & Restore a WordPress Backup with Backup Buddy

Is backing up your website important? Well, what are the chances that your website will up and disappear?

Higher than you think!

Maybe you’ll perform an update that’ll fail.  Hell, maybe your server will simply crash and all your hard work will go up in smoke. It happened to me back when I started.

It was frustrating and very defeating – my website was corrupted by some wrong turns made on the back end. Following that, a friend of mine had his website hacked! Luckily we discussed backing things up prior to this and his website was up and running again that morning – with tightened up security.

It would seem a bit silly not to back up a website but here’s the problem – how do you do it?

I can’t stand doing things the hard way – I prefer simple. So I lashed out and got a copy of Backup Buddy. I’ve been using this plugin for some time now, and I often forget I have it – because it runs in the background and is very ‘set and forget’ – all it requires is a little setup.

So I’ll show you just how to do this and you can safely have your website backed up in multiple ways within a few clicks.

How to Setup Back Up Buddy

Below is a video guiding you through the whole process.  If you can’t watch the video every thing is typed out below!

Step #1 – Install Backup Buddy

First things first, you need to download Backup Buddy and install it. Dead Easy:

1. In the WordPress dashboard, Go to your plugins page, up the top of the page click the button ‘Add New’.
2. Next the ‘Search’, click ‘Upload’ – then locate your Backup Buddy zip file by clicking ‘Choose file’.
3. Click ‘Install Now’.
4. Once installed click ‘Activate Plugin’
5. Pat yourself on the back! The plugin is now installed.

Step #2- Create Your First Backup & Download it.

This is a little more detailed than Step #1!

1. On your left WordPress dashboard, hover over ‘Backup Buddy’ and click ‘Getting Started’ (or ‘settings’ if ‘Getting Started’ is unavailable).
2. Then Click on ‘Quick Setup’ on the tab on the top left.
3. Fill out the ‘Email Address’ and ‘password’ sections.
4. Leave field 3 and 4 on the default settings (4. should read ‘No Automated Schedule’).
5. Click ‘Save & Make Your first Backup’.

Now your first backup is being made! All you have to do is download it.

Once the backup is finished you can simply Click ‘Download Backup’ or head down the left Dashboard menu, Hover over ‘Backup Buddy’ and click ‘backup’.  Once the page loads you’ll see a list of complete and database backups you can easily download.

Next, you have to download Import Buddy. Simply head to Restore/Migrate in the Backup Buddy menu (left dashboard menu). Click the button that says ‘Download importbuddy.php‘ and save it to your computer! Note: You’ll be asked to give importbuddy a password, you can enter one or simply leave it blank to use the password you entered on your setup page.

Step #3 – Setup & Backup to a Remote Destination

What’s a remote destination?  Well, it’s a server you send your backup to that’s separate from your website and computer, giving you a third layer of security for your website backup. When you purchase Backup Buddy you get 1Gb free on the Stash server, so here’s how to set up a backup on the Stash server:

1. In the Backup Buddy dashboard menu – click ‘Remote Destinations’
2. On the new page, click ‘Add New Destination’
3. You’ll see you have a few options there, Amazon S3, Drop box, etc – we want to click on the top option: Stash.
4. You’ll need to insert your username and password (same as your iThemes username and password)
5. You’ll then be taken to page where you can input some settings, these are entirely up to you and depend on how many back ups you can fit on your Stash account.
6. Click ‘ + Add Destination’.

Stash is now set up! Let’s do a back up:

1. In the Backup Buddy dashboard menu, click on ‘backup’
2. Check the box ‘Send to remote destination as part of backup process.’ (under database or complete buttons)
3. Select your Stash server
4. Click ‘Database Only’ or ‘Complete backup’ – whichever you’d prefer.
5. A backup is now being made and sent to your Stash server!

Now you need to send a copy of importbuddy.php.  

1. Head to Restore/Migrate in the Backup Buddy menu (left dashboard menu).
2. Click the button ‘Send importbuddy.php to a Destination‘
3. Click / Select the Stash account.
4. You should see a message near the top of the page that says ‘ImportBuddy file successfully sent.’ – You’re done!

Schedule Automatic Backups

This is the icing on the cake, you can automatically schedule your backups and simply forget about it – they’ll happen without you! To do this:

1. Click on ‘Schedules’ in the Backup Buddy menu.
2. Fill out the fields under ‘Add New Schedule’ – name, profile (database or full), next run, etc and finally checking the ‘Enable Schedule Run’ box
3. Click ‘Add Remote Destination’ to enable an automatic back up to Stash (click the Stash account as an option)
4. Click ‘+ Add New Schedule’ button – You’ve now created an automatic schedule ot back up your WordPress website!

Note: I recommend backing up your database Weekly, and your full site monthly (definitely do both) – the full site is a bigger job but can be backed up more frequently if you update very often.

Restoring a Backup!

Well you’ve gotta know how to restore a backup, otherwise you may as well not backup at all or pay someone to do it – which is ridiculous considering how dead easy this all is.  You’ll need two things:

1. importbuddy.php
2. A full site backup zip file (the most recent downloaded from your website or Stash)

These two files then need to be uploaded to your hosting website – this done easily through an FTP program like CoreFTP (like in the video at the top of this page).  Once uploaded, head to your website domain /importbuddy.php (for example – ‘http://www.yourdomainname.com/importbuddy.php’). You’ll be taken a step by step wizard, it’s pretty self explanatory but for the sake of convenience:

Step 1: Enter your importbuddy password mentioned earlier, click ‘Authenticate’.

Step 2: Choose your backup!  It should be automatically listed since it is uploaded (you also have the option to upload a backup or retrieve it from stash). Click ‘Next Step’.

Step 3: Sit back and watch everything unpack, once completed – Click ‘Next Step’.

Step 4: The most involved, most of these fields will be automatically filled out, but double check your URL address and other details before clicking ‘Next Step’. The default settings are pretty trustworthy.

Step 5: Let the database install! Once completed – click ‘Next Step’.

Step 6: Your website should be up and running!  Click the URL to test the website (open in a new window).  Once happy just finalize by clicking ‘Cleanup and remove temporary files’

Done!

You now know how to backup, schedule backups and restore your website with Backup Buddy.  As you can see from the video it can be done in under 15 minutes, even quicker if you’re not explaining every step like me!

If you don’t have Backup Buddy I highly recommend it and swear by it – it’s saved me in the past! So download it here if you don’t already have a copy.

If you enjoyed this post please let people know about it and this website! Any questions – just hit me up!

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