Let‘s face it – nearly 20% of WordPress sites get hacked or infected with malware each year according to [reference]. Restoring from quality backups is your first line of defense, saving clients hours or days of downtime.
That‘s why automated backups are essential for every WordPress pro.
In this comprehensive guide, I‘ll show you how to configure complete WordPress backups that run automatically using BackWPup – one of the most powerful free backup plugins available today.
Why Backups Matter
Before we dive into the technical details, it‘s important to cover why backups need to be core part of your client site maintenance plans.
According to hosts like Kinsta, over 30% of their hacked client sites could‘ve fully recovered content if proper backups existed. Additionally, human errors like accidentally deleting content or installing problematic plugins tend to happen every 1.5 years per average WordPress site.
Backups allow you to quickly restore from disasters instead of losing months of content rebuild time.
Key Advantages of Automated Backups:
- Saves hours rebuilding hacked, broken or lost site content
- Avoids expensive data recovery costs from hosting providers
- Offsite storage protects from server failures losing everything
- Gives peace of mind against worst case scenarios
Now that we‘ve covered the critical importance, let‘s see how to configure automated WordPress backups using BackWPup.
Step 1: Installing & Activating the Plugin
First, login to your WordPress dashboard and go to "Plugins > Add New". Search for "BackWPup" and install the plugin authored by Inpsyde GmbH.
Once activated, you‘ll find a new BackWPup menu in the admin sidebar. This is where we‘ll configure everything.
Now let‘s start creating backup jobs…
Step 2: Adding New Backup Jobs
Click "Add New Job" under the Jobs menu. Let‘s go through what each option means:
General Settings
- Job Name: Name it something recognizable like "Weekly Site Backup"
- Job Tasks: Enable all except "Optimize tables" & "Check Tables"
Archive Creation
- Archive format: Stick to the default .tar.gz format
- Job Destination: Critical! Choose cloud storage like Dropbox over local storage
Scheduling
- Interval: Depends on needs, but weekly is good for smaller sites
Let‘s expand on those key points…
Using Cloud Storage
I highly recommend using cloud storage like Dropbox over saving backups to your server. If the server is compromised and backups deleted or ransomware encrypted, you‘re still dead in the water.
Dropbox gives affordable offsite storage for recovery. Wasabi and other "cold storage" options work too.
Cost example: 500GB on Dropbox would allow nearly 5000 backups for a 100MB site before hitting limits. This would take 9+ years at weekly backups!
Backup Frequency Best Practices
Weekly backups are generally recommended at minimum if you‘re on top of updates and security basics.
For sites with frequent content changes, daily jobs may be preferred. This does use more storage over time.
Monthly backups are not enough in my opinion – you can lose weeks of work this way!
Here are some backup schedule tips:
Now let‘s look at including the right data in backups…
Step 3: Choosing Database Tables
The Database Tables section controls what‘s backed up from MySQL.
All tables related to WordPress core, plugins and themes will be auto-selected.
Some plugins create extraneous tables that may be safe to exclude. But unless you fully understand the impact, I suggest keeping them all to be safe here.
If you have multiple sites using shared tables, see my guide on [reference] for backups in multi-site environments.
Step 4: Adding File & Folders
Under the Backup Files tab, you can find all folders in your site‘s file system.
I recommend excluding the /wordpress/ folder which contains core install files easily replaced if needed.
The /wp-contents/uploads/ folder however captures all your media assets and should be included. The size of this folder is a major factor in backup storage requirements.
You might see other plugin folders here too. Again I‘d typically keep them unless confident they aren’t needed in restoration for some reason.
Step 5: Storing Offsite Through Dropbox
Now that we‘ve covered what data to backup, let‘s get it to store securely offsite.
BackWPup has direct integration with storage services like Dropbox, S3, Google Drive and more.
Click the Dropbox tab > Re-authenticate to connect your Dropbox account. Simply log in so BackWPup can access your cloud repository.
This will now automatically copy finished backup archives to the Apps folder area named BackWPup. Easy as pie!
Make sure you have adequate storage on Dropbox, Wasabi or whichever service you choose here.
Step 6: Wrapping Up & Testing
We‘re now all configured for automated WordPress backups!
Visit BackWPup > Jobs to view all schedules, run manual backups or make any modifications needed down the road.
I also strongly suggest doing a manual run as an initial test to confirm the process finishes successfully. Monitor the logs on first run for any errors related to server resources etc.
Then monitor backup status for a few cycles to be sure your jobs keep completing consistently without issues.
Troubleshooting Backup Size Limits
If unfinished backups are common on your host, there are a few things to try:
- Talk to hosts increase PHP memory, time & process limits
- Adjust BackWPup settings:
- Increase max retries on failure
- Reduce server load intensity
- Exclude unnecessary tables and files reducing size
Splitting database and file backups across separate, smaller jobs may help as well.
For any other questions or issues getting WordPress backups running smoothly, post a comment below!
Conclusion & Next Actions
Automatic backups should give you confidence that disaster recovery is quick and painless in the event of site failure.
Follow this guide to get BackWPup backing up your WordPress site data and files on a schedule with offsite storage.
A few parting thoughts:
- Consider staging environments to test restores safely without touching production
- Document steps needed from backup retrieval to restoration
- Ensure hosting companies have backup provisions in their shared Business Continuity guarantees
Now over to you – what backup scheduling and storage approaches have you found to be most effective and affordable long-term? Share your tips in the comments for others to learn from!
