One of the most import things to have when dealing with any kind of computer data is a GOOD BACKUP! Doesn’t matter if we are talking about your tablet, Windows PC, Mac, Linux pc. In addition, for those of us who run and manage online blog sites, backing up the site is also a necessary step to protect our work. A website can go down by many reasons from hardware/software issues at your host, to hackers trying to cause issues. Here is a solution to backup your site if you are a WordPress user, offered for Free by iDrive.
The best backup is the one that takes the least amount of work to complete, because the more you have to do, the more likely you are to skip doing it. Tech Geek and More has been using (LINK) iDrive (http://www NULL.idrive NULL.com) for a number of years now. In addition, iDrive (http://www NULL.idrive NULL.com/?p=techgeekandmore) is a (paid) partner for Tech Geek and More for the past year.
iDrive has now released a free plugin (and who doesn’t like FREE) for WordPress that will on a nightly basis, back up your WordPress account into an iDrive account with 5 GB’s of space.
From the (LINK) iDrive (http://www NULL.idrive NULL.com/wordpress NULL.htm) site
“IDrive Plug-in for WordPress is an easy to use backup utility, designed specifically to backup WordPress blog data into your IDrive online backup account. It provides scheduled as well as immediate backup of WordPress blog data including files and MySQL database dump”
Features
- Immediate backup of WordPress blog data, both files as well as MySQL data dump, into your IDrive online backup account
- Scheduled backups occur after 12 midnight every day
- Immediate restore of backed up data from your IDrive online backup account
- Smart backup – Only the first backup transfers entire WordPress content, subsequent backups are incremental where only the modified data is backed up
- Automatic notification via email on backup / restore status
- Secure transfer of data to IDrive server using SSL. Non SSL transfer option is also available for non SSL servers
- Detailed logging of backup / restore operations
To install this plug-in just find it from your plug-in section in the dashboard section of your WP install and select install.
Once installed, you will need to sign up for a new iDrive account (did I mention this one is free). *If you already have an account with iDrive for your pc backup, that account will not work for the plug in.
Once the plug-in is installed and activated, just go to the plug-in and click where it says “Click here” (as shown below) to set up your account.
Once your account is set up, you have a choice of doing an initial backup at that moment or just waiting for the regular scheduled backup.
I ran the backup initially just after install, and I did not find any down time for Tech Geek and More, while the backup was running.
One of the biggest advantages of using iDrive is the snapshot feature. This is a feature that they also include in the regular PC/Mac version of iDrive.
What are snapshots? (From the iDrive (http://www NULL.idrive NULL.com/online_faq_wordpress NULL.htm#q10) site)
Your IDrive for WordPress online account retains copies of your WordPress data for the last 10* days using the snapshots technology. A snapshot is an image of the backup data taken at a particular point of time, once everyday.
What this means is that you will have the last 10* days of your WordPress data in your account in the form of snapshots. Each snapshot will have data from the last backup performed for that particular day. This is useful if your WordPress blog data is corrupted by any means (hacks, bugs etc.).
You can restore any file, database dump, or even the entire blog from any previous snapshot and start your blog again.
Snapshots show up as folders having names like ‘BackUp_nightly.0_*’, ‘BackUp_nightly.9_*’ etc. ‘BackUp_nightly.0_*’ represents yesterday’s snapshot. ‘BackUp_nightly.9_*’ represents the snapshot taken 10 days back.
The additional storage requirements for Snapshots have no impact on your account quota usage.
* The number of days for which Snapshots are stored may change without notice.
And lastly important information for those considering using iDrive
System Requirements
- WordPress 2.8.5 or higher hosted on a Linux / Unix system. WordPress blog hosted on a Windows system is not supported
- JavaScript enabled web browser – IE, Safari, Firefox, Chrome
- Admin access to WordPress dashboard to activate the Plug-in
- PHP 5.1 or higher
