Backup Your Websites Using ManageWP

Backing up your sites is an important part of managing your websites,

and ManageWP makes that job a whole lot easier. Having a good

backup process in place helps to keep your site secure. If the worst

should happen you'll always have a backup that you can restore your

site from. Without a backup you could have to spend days trying to fix

your site, spend hundreds of dollars on help to fix it, or even completely

lose your website.ManageWP protects you from that.

You can automate the process, and back up to a number of sources

including Dropbox and Amazon S3.

Let's look at how easy it is to back up your site using ManageWP.

Backing up an Individual Site

To backup an individual site hover over the site’s name and click

backup now:

A popup window will appear giving you some options so that you can

control your backup.

Backup type - choose whether you want to backup your whole site

or just your database

Number of backups to keep - you can keep between 1 and 30

backups

Exclude files and folders - exclude any folders you don’t want to

backup

Include folders - if you have other folders other than the core

WordPress folders tell ManageWP here

No compression - if your site is too large and your backups are

failing check this box

Optimize database tables before backup - check to optimize your

database

Do not keep backups on this server - we recommend that you

keep your backups in a different place in case your server goes

down. If you check this box you should choose an external backup

destination

If you are happy with your settings you can click “Create Backup”. If you

are backing up to an external location go on to the next step.

Backup to an External Location

You can backup to a number of different locations:

FTP

Amazon S3

Dropbox

Email

You will need to have your login details for whichever service you

choose to use.

You can test your connection by clicking the Test Connection button.

This will help you to make sure that everything is working correctly

before you get started.

When you are happy click Create Backup..

Automating Your Backups

As well as backing up a single website you can create backup tasks.

You can create as many backup tasks as you want so if you want you

can backup your sites at different times or to different locations you can.

To create a backup task navigate to Protect > Backups and click Add

New.

a) Task Options

First of all, set up your options.

There are a number of settings you can choose here:

Task name - give your task a name

Task schedule - choose how often you want your task to take place

Backup type - either back up your whole site or just your database

Number of Backups to Keep - choose how many backups you want

to keep

Exclude Files and Folders - choose any folders that you wish to

exclude

Include folders - include any additional folders that are not part of

the WordPress core

No compression - if you are having trouble backing up your site

choose this

Optimize database tables before backup - this will decrease the

size of your backup

Do not keep backups on this server - check this if you are backing

up to an external location

b) Choose websites

Choose the sites that you wish to back up, either individual sites or by

group.

c) Choose your backup location

You can backup to:

FTP

Amazon S3

Dropbox

Email

You will need to have your login details to backup to any of these

locations.

When you are happy click Save.

Your backup task is scheduled. Now you have regular backups and a

whole pile of peace of mind.

Failed Backups

Sometimes a backup can fail. There can be a number of different

reasons for this. Before you panic, check out the tips below.

File too big

Your site may be too big, or there may not be enough space on your

server for it. To check whether you file’s size is the cause of your failed

backup, run a database backup only and see if that is successful. A

database backup is much smaller, so if that works the probably reason

for your backup failing is your file size.

Try the following:

exclude unnecessary folders from the backup (including backups

made by other plugins or anything else that causes the file size to

increase unnecessarily

check the No Compression option

Clean up your folders, removing any large files that you don’t need

any more

Check your database for large unnecessary tables made by

plugins

Execution Time and Memory Limit

Failed backups can also be caused by an execution time or memory

limit that is too low. To increase your memory limit and execution please

contact your hosting provider to do this for you because a lot of

providers won't let you do it yourself. You can never be sure how much

will be enough but 600s execution time and a 256M memory limit is a

good start.

Insufficient Write Permissions

Your WordPress permissions need to be correct to perform a backup.

The correct permissions will depend on your hosting company. You can

read more about write permissions on the WordPress Codex.

If you need help with any of these changes you will need to contact

your hosting provider. You should ask them to:

Increase your PHP execution time

Give you access to the mysqldump command

Give you access to zip and unzip commands

Ensure that wp-content is writeable by your website

If none of these solve your backup problems, you can try asking

our support experts in the ManageWP community forum.