Backing up your blog
by Dave Johnson
February
17
2009
Just over a month ago a very popular website called JournalSpace hit rock bottom and then some. Taking with it was all of the blogs that were hosted on it. JournalSpace has since been sold off and looks to be starting up again. There is a lesson to be learned here and that is always backup your blog in other words back up your database which holds all your blogs information. I don’t know if JournalSpace made it accessible for their members to do this or not. My guess is they didn’t, but to be perfectly honest I’ve never heard of JournalSpace before they crashed. how ever this post isn’t about how JournalSpace messed up a good thing. It’s a public service announcement about backing up your data frequently.
So here we go. First I’ll show you how to make a backup in WordPress and then I’ll show you how to make a backup in Phpmyadmin.
WordPress (2.7) backup
With the Admin account login to your blogs backend. Once you’re logged in go to Tools -> Export. From this page you can chose a specific author or everything. Then just download the file and save on your computer. The downside to this is it doesn’t backup everything in the database just the posts on the blog. So plug-ins that use the database too will not be backed up
Phpmyadmin backup
Login to your web host provider, and find a link to your Mysql database. Once you login to Phpmyadmin, (provided it uses Phpmyadmin) click on Export just above the logout button in the center of the page. By default everything should be setup. All you have to do is push go.
Once you back your data up, make copies and put it in a different places (e.g., a disk, external hard drive, or another computer.) The more you post the more often you should backup your data.
One other thing, don’t trust your web host. Yes it’s true that they probably are backing things up, but I think it’s your own responsibility to make sure your data is safe. If you lose it, it’s your own damn fault. Years and years of blogging could be lost in a second if you don’t back it up now.