WordPress Backup Buddy Review Step by Step With Pictures

Last updated on March 20th, 2018 at 06:15 am

If you have a blog, then it won’t hurt you to learn about the WordPress Backup Buddy plugin. What is it you ask? It’s a paid backup plugin for your website, but it does a lot more than just backups. So I’m going to walk you through step-by-step on how to make the most of the WordPress Backup Buddy plugin.

You might be thinking, why do I need a backup and restore plugin? My hosting account creates backups of my sites. You’re not the only one who thinks like this..most people feel like this.

More articles on protecting your WordPress blog:

• Does WordPress Automatically Backup Your Content
• WordPress Security Tips to Protect Your Blog
• How to Choose A WordPress Theme

 

How WordPress Backup Buddy Can Save You Money

Let me share a little story with you…

When I first started managing websites and working as a freelancer, I took over a clients website. I still currently manage their website…(so I won’t mention them by name)

When I first started managing their website, I didn’t realize they didn’t have a backup of their website.

Well, let’s just say that I clicked the wrong button on something. Their website disappeared. I started freaking, after all, I knew I didn’t have a backup, since I had just taken over their website. I couldn’t tell them, hey I just deleted your website, thanks for hiring me.

Nope, instead I got on the phone with GoDaddy to find out if they had a backup plan. Guess what they didn’t.

However, GoDaddy told me that they keep backups of their clients sites for 4 days, they could provide me with that backup if I would like to pay.

So I asked him, how much is it going to cost me? He said $150 for the zipped file.

What the hell, $150 for a one-time backup?

Well I had to pay it, after all, I had to get my clients restored. I wasn’t happy about it by no means, but hey what can you do. It was my fault.

I don’t want that to happen to you. With so many different backup plugins on the market, there is absolutely no reason NOT to have a backup plan for your website.

There are literally tons of backup plugins you can choose such as: Updraft, Vault Press, Duplicator and etc. All you have to do is search the WordPress directory and you will find tons of plugins.

But for the sake of this tutorial, I will be using the WordPress Backup Buddy plugin, because I am a paid member of this plugin and can show you all the features of it.

So time to get started so you learn how to backup a website. If you are still contemplating how to get started with WordPress or if I should, there is no better time than today.

I am going to assume that you already know how to upload a plugin, if not then watch the video below as it will walk you through the entire process of uploading the plugin and using the plugin.

Watch the Video and Learn How to Install and Setup the WordPress Backup Buddy

Of course if you prefer pictures and reading, then follow along below, as I provide you step by step tutorials with big pictures that will make the process easier.

Once the plugin is installed on your website it’s time to head on over the to settings tab.

I’ve included an image that will walk you through on what you need to focus on.

General: Before you create your first backup, you will need to create a password that will enable you to restore the site. I believe that you do have to have a password setup, make sure you remember what you use, otherwise you won’t be able to open up the file when you need it.

Email Notifications: Enter an email that you check on a regular basis as the plugin will send you notifications of whether your backup was successful or not.

Local Archive Storage Limits: Enter the number of backups that you want to keep on file. I like to usually put 5 in that box, but you can put whatever you feel comfortable. What this means is that once the plugin creates 5 backups, it will delete the oldest backup, so that there are only 5 backups.

Database Defaults: I usually don’t select any of these as I want it to delete the whole database. You can control whatever you want to do here.

Files and Directories: If you have files or directories that are not a part of your regular WordPress directory, you can include those in your backup right here.

These are the only settings that I usually set when I am setting up this plugin on clients or my personal sites.

You can feel free to browse the other tabs if you choose to, after all that is the way you learn is by venturing out.

Backing Up Your Website

Okay here is a picture of that will explain what you need to do…we’ll cover it in more detail below. Or you can watch the video I created that walks you through step by step on how to use the WordPress Backup Buddy plugin.

Skip this part as we just set up our settings in General Settings.

Now you see this.

 

Choose a backup profile to run

Database only: pretty self-explanatory this runs a backup of your database only.

Complete backup: This will create a backup of the whole website including the database.

Backup Log: As you can see I haven’t created any backups yet. When I do then you will see a log of the latest backups.

For this demonstration purpose, I am only going to do a complete backup. So let’s click backup.

The backup is in progress, all you have to do is sit and wait. Depending on the size of your website, is how long the process will take.

I have found that it only takes a minute or two for smaller sites.

Once it’s done you can then download your backup.

If the process was not successful, you would see an error instead of green checks.

Great you just learned about backing up your WordPress blog.

Wait, what if I want to setup automatic backups? After all who wants to log into their website everyday and create one? We all have better things to do, like hang out with our families, watch Netflix or whatever you enjoy doing.

The beauty of the WordPress Backup Buddy plugin is that it allows you to setup automatic backups. Not only that, but it also allows you to store your backups in different locations.

Why use a different location to store your backups?

If you start storing all your backups on your hosting account server, you may end up getting an email from them saying that your account has reached its limit. Of course it depends on what company your site is hosted with, this is where my site is hosted.

Of course this depends on what type of hosting plan you have.

I like to host my backups on Amazon S3 because it’s extremely affordable and I don’t have to worry about my backups being located on my hosting account.

You won’t ever have to worry about your backups ever being accidentally deleted. Here are all your options you can choose from.

 

Click on the send to remote destination to start.

I will walk you through on how to setup your backup with Amazon S3.

Step 1:

Sign up with Amazon S3 if you don’t already have an account. Once you have done that, you will need to create an API key. You will need to get your access key and secret key so you can connect the WordPress Backup Buddy plugin.

I’m not going to go through the process of how to sign up for Amazon S3, because there are a ton of videos you can find online.

Once you have your keys, it’s time to go to step 2.

Step 2:

Enter all the necessary information to connect and save your site backups.

So lets quickly walk through these setups so you can start storing your WordPress automatic backups on Amazon S3. This is where I store all of mine.

Destination Name: This is for your purpose only, this allows you to create a destination name that you know what your backups are.

AWS Access Key: This is the key that we talked about above. You need this in order to be able to store on the cloud.

AWS Secret Key: This is the other important key you will need to get from your Amazon S3 account.

Bucket Name: Hopefully, when you created your Amazon S3 account, you created a bucket to store your backups. I have a few sites online, so what I like to do is create a bucket with the name of my website.

This allows me to remember what sites backups are stored where. It also allows me to find my backups quickly when and if I need to restore my site.

Once you fill out all the required information, you will want to test out your settings. If everything works, then you can click on the add destination.

Now you are set…when you make a backup, it is sent to your backup option you chose. The downside is that this only occurs when you are manually creating a backup.

If you want to always send the zipped files to your Amazon S3 account, you need to set this up in the automatic settings.

Let’s go Set Up The Automatic Backup Feature

Head on over to your WordPress dashboard left side and find the WordPress Backup Buddy schedule. It will look like this.

Once we get this setup, your backups will be hands free.

Step 3:

Depending on how often you write new content or make changes to your website will determine if you want to setup daily backups or weekly backups.

If you are constantly updating your website, I recommend that you setup daily backups.

Okay lets break this down so you can get this filled out correctly.

Add New Schedule

Schedule Name: You can name this anything you want, no one will see it but you.

Backup Profile: Choose whether you want to backup the database only or the complete website.

Backup Interval: How often do you want to create the backups. There are a ton of options that you can choose from…take a look at the screenshot I provided below.

As you can see, you have many different options you can choose from. There is absolutely no reason that you shouldn’t be creating automatic backups of your WordPress blog.

If you are using WordPress, which chances are if you are on my site, you are using WordPress. You know that something can go wrong with your site at any time.

The worst feeling is that you work hard on your site, you don’t want to lose your hard work. You also don’t want to pay GoDaddy or any other hosting account a lot of money to restore your site.

If you feel that the Backup Buddy is a little too pricey, which I admit it can be expensive. There are some free alternatives that you can use to backup your site. I found this site that claims that these are free, you will have to do the due diligence yourself on how good they actually work and if they are actually free.

Like I said in my video above, I’ve only used one Free backup plugin that seems to work good. If you haven’t watched the video, then go back up and watch it.

Okay great now I know how to use the WordPress Backup Buddy plugin to create a backup, but how to I use it to restore my website?
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We’ll leave that for another day. I will create another step by step tutorial on how to restore your website using the Backup Buddy plugin as well as a video.

By the way, I just created my first video on my YouTube channel. If you haven’t watched it, then be sure to visit my channel and let me know what you think.

I would greatly appreciate and as always, leave your comments below of what you would like to learn. Don’t hesitate to contact me. If possible, I will write an over the shoulder tutorial that will help you out.