Backup Plugins

Video Transcript

In this class, we’re gonna look at backing up our site using a plugin.

And then our previous class, we had the opportunity to set up an automated backup system during the auto install process. If you did that, then you should not set up a second automated backup system using a plugin, do one or the other, not both, but do at least one of them. As I mentioned in that previous class, I recommend using a plugin for your automated backups.

Now if after checking out this class, you want to turn off the auto backup that you created in the auto install process, then go back into your control panel and set your backup to no backup, then follow this guide to install instead of the auto backup using the plug in of your choice. Now you’ve got a lot of options when it comes to automated backup plugins. So let’s have a quick review. You can go to wordpress.org slash plugins in the search box, type in backup, and it’ll bring you to the page that contains a lot of different backup options. Another way to do this exact same thing is from within your admin areas, add new plugins section in the search plugins box, type in backup, and you’ll get the exact same stuff. Now the items you should be looking for in your automated backup plugin, or remote storage features and automated backup features.

Some bonus features would be the ability to create a staging site and the ability to migrate sites, one thing you should look for in order to avoid and those are the automated backup plugins, like jetpack that provide way more features in what you’re going to be using. So unless you’re going to be using all the features that jetpack offers, which are way beyond just backups, then I would say avoid jetpack. Another popular option is Updraft Plus, I don’t like Updraft Plus, I used to use it. But it creates too many files for a single backup. And I understand the logic behind it.

But you’re juggling around a lot of different files, one for plugins, one for themes, one for files, but unless you know that your problem, the reason why you’re having to use the backup to restore your site, unless you know the problem was with the plugins or the files or the themes, you’re going to need to restore all of them anyway. So why not just have them all in a single backup. That’s my theory. Anyway, that’s one of the reasons why I don’t use Updraft Plus Another is that in its backup, it does not backup the WordPress core files. It even says so whenever you are on the backup page within your site, if you’ve got Updraft Plus installed and activated, but on the Updraft Plus website, it says that it backs up all of your WordPress files, databases, plugins and themes. Not true.

So that’s another strike against Updraft Plus, the one that I do love and use is called WP vivid. It checks all the boxes, the free version has a remote storage and they schedule backups. The Pro version has a lot of stuff. And the big bonus here is that they provide you with a 14 day free trial of all of their pro features. And at the end of that 14 days, you keep all of those pro features.

What you lose at the end of that 14 day trial is the updates to all those pro features, you still get the updates to the free version features just not the pro features, and you no longer have the pro support at the end of that 14 days. And if you end up falling in love with WP vivid like I have, then I would suggest as soon as you possibly can purchase one of the licenses for the pro version. Let’s go ahead and install activate and do a quick run through on WP vivid head on over to wp vivid.com. And the acquiring of the pro version can be a little bit tricky.

So let’s go through that process. First click on Start 14 day trial. And you’re going to want to have the free version already installed and activated. Otherwise, whenever you try to install the pro version, it’ll pop up an error message saying you need to have the free version first. So scroll on down here and to get to the Get Started button for the pro version. Click on that. And if you’re not brought to this page, up here in the top right corner, you’ll see you’ve got one item in your shopping cart, click on that that will bring you to this page. Now that at this point, you want to go through the procedure checkout.

And you’re not going to need a credit card or anything but you do have to set up an account. If you click on this button here, it takes us to the checkout page where you then fill in all the blanks your name, address, email address, and you see there’s no charge. There’s no boxes for your credit card information. But at this point, you click on Place Order and that’s it. I’ve already done that. So I’m gonna go ahead and login Oh and by the way after you do that, you’ll receive two emails one saying that the order is now complete, and one saying that your pro account has been created. I believe it’s this one here that your pro account has been created that provides you with the login username The password is going to log in.

So once you’re logged in, this is the dashboard, you go to downloads, you want to download the backup Pro. And the staging, the staging is pretty cool. But we’re not going to cover that right now, that could take an entire class in and of itself. But download both of these. And once you have them downloaded, go back into your admin area, go to add new under the plugins section, click on Upload plug in, and then upload the pro version. Of course, at this point, you should already have the free version installed and activated. I have both installed only have the free version activated. Let’s go into the installed plugins. And here’s the pro version go and activate that. And all the settings by default should work perfectly.

It’s only if after you try a couple of backups, you’re getting some error messages, they should contact support, and then make the required tweaks to those default settings. Otherwise, leave everything as is. And you can come right down here, click on the Big Blue backup now button. And that’ll do your instant manual backup. And you should do that first before you do anything else. But we also have walkthrough guides here on the page itself for everything, the next thing I would do is go ahead and go into Cloud storage and set up your cloud storage of Google Drive Dropbox, OneDrive s3, or the s3 clone called wasabi. So once you have this setup, if you go into schedule, you have the opportunity to enable incremental backup schedule.

And again, there’s loads of details down here on how to do all this stuff. And rather than this being a 30 minute class, it’s pretty simple to walk through these on your own using those included documents.
But for a general backup scheduling, click on Create a new schedule myself, I would do a weekly or monthly full backup of both files and database, just like what’s checked right here. And again, if you’ve already got the remote storage setup, I would send it there. Of course, I don’t have one set up. So it’s not letting me because you really should not have them sent to your local host in case you got a fried server. If you do, that’s where your local host is at. And if your server goes Bye bye. So are all the backups that were stored there.

So store all of your backups to a remote storage, but one of your schedule should be everything database and files. Of course, this is dependent upon how often you add new content. But the way I have mine set up monthly for database and files, and then daily only database. And if we go to custom backup, you see these arrows over here to the right. This allows you to dig deeper into each of these sections of your WordPress site to include or exclude particular portions for that type of backup. So you can have multiple backups scheduled for each WordPress site.

One last thing I want to point out before I close out this class, and that is one of the other beauties behind WP vivid is that it does a instant backup before you update any plugins themes or the WordPress core. For example, I’ve got a plug in here that needs to be updated. And it would commend to plugins you see right here it is, and we got an update now, before it actually updates. It does a backup first. And then as soon as the backup is done, then it updates the plugins. The same process holds true for a theme or the WordPress core files. Now when this does not happen is if you have your plugins set to auto update.

So if we go back into plugins, if you enable auto updates, it’s not going to do those backups. Another reason not to enable auto updates which I’ve covered in previous classes. Well that’s going to bring us to the end of this class on creating a backup system for a WordPress site using a plugin. Thanks for checking it out and you have a great day.