Hello again friends,

Currently I have shared with you one way to make backup of your WordPress website by using All-in-Оne-WP Migration. And like I have mentioned in this article – there is always a good idea to have another backup option just in case. Better safe, than sorry – right?

So with that being said I’d like to introduce to you one plugin that will allow you to generate the needed backups extremely easy. It is called BackWPup.

Like most of the WordPress plugins this one also has a free and premium (PRO) version. If you are going to use BackWPup as a secondary backup solution or for a small to medium website, then the free version will be functional enough for you. For bigger and more complex websites it might be better to purchase the PRO version as it provides additional functions and more importantly it is much better supported.

Why is BackWPup so great?

Because when you activate and install the plugin you can immediately go to its dashboard and click on the blue “Download database backup” and it will immediately allow you to save a complete backup file of your database. It is the most important thing as WordPress uses it to store everything in it – your posts, pages, website structure, etc.

Then there are the WordPress files. They are also important but most of them can be restored immediately if you download a fresh copy of the CMS and replace the folders. The same applies to all plugins and themes and in the end the only files and folders that may be lost in case of a big website failure are the ones in the Uploads folder and .htaccess. In some cases you may also lose precious translation files in the Languages directory.

Why am I sharing all this information?

For two reasons – the first one is to know an alternative method of restoring the majority of the lost files (for the rest you can download them by using FTP and restore them later by uploading them back to the server) and the second one is to highlight the ability of BackWPup to actually create backups of selected folders thus reducing the final backup file size and saving the files and folders that are really irreplaceable.

How to achieve this?

Simply go to the BackWPup subsection in the Dashboard and then click on Add new job. Make the necessary settings and pay special attention to the backup job type that you are creating, the archive format, the destination of the backup (multiple choices are available but some of them like exporting to Amazon Glacier and Google Drive are available for the PRO version only) and when you are ready with this proceed to the “Files” tab. There you can select the folders that you want to be included in the backup.

You can also make adjustments to the other tabs as well. For example the “DB Backup” tab allows you to select which tables to include in the database backup and whether it should be compressed as GZip or not. The “Schedule” tab is also very important because you can actually run the backup job in the most suitable time for you. In order this to happen you can use WordPress Cron or save a link and when clicked upon it will start the job. You can also start the backup job with WP-CLI in order to run it from the commandline or you can get the start script via the link that is provided in the “Schedule” tab of the BackWPup plugin. The “Plugins tab” will allow you to determine the name of the plugin list name and the compression for this backup.

BackWPup will provide you with detailed logs for each backup and a list of backups. All of these are in the respective subsections in the BackWPup menu in the WordPress dashboard.

So let’s have a detailed look at the free version of the plugin for a conclusion to this post. BackWPup’ s free version is a powerful backup tool that will allow you to:

• make a complete backup of the database and files of your website
• push each backup to an external Backup Service, like Dropbox, S3, FTP and other services
• check, repair and most importantly – optimize the WP Database
• provide WordPress XML Export
• generate backups in zip, tar, tar.gz, tar.bz2 formats
• send logs and backups by email and many more

The PRO version is much more supported and provides additional functionalities.

BackWPup is also available in different languages:

• English
• French
• German
• Russian
• Simplified Chinese

So there you have it friends! One powerful backup option to keep your database and files safe. Please share your thoughts in the comments below and spread the word about BackWPup in the social media.

See you soon!