Safe door

For a while I wasn’t sure of the best way to backup WordPress automatically to Dropbox so I decided to research this and share with you.

It’s really simple and only requires a few plugins and no programming on your part. Let’s get started.

First, you will need the following plugins:

  1. WP Time Machine
  2. Utopia Cron

Then, you will need a Dropbox account. Dropbox is a cloud-based storage service that allows you to save files to the web that you can access from any computer later on. I love it because I use 5 different computers and Dropbox allows me to synchronize files across all of them. Best of all, it’s free. Sign up here.

Once you have WP Time Machine installed you then must activate it & configure it to connect to your Dropbox account. Look under Settings – wp time machine. Simply enter the email address and password (don’t forget to click ‘save my password’) you use for Dropbox and a folder name where you wish to store the fies. I recommend something like “yourdomain.com” so that you know what those file are for. Also, this helps if you’re backing up more than one site to keep them separate. When you’re done click ‘Generate WP Time Machine archive’. This process will take a min or two to complete. Next, click on the ‘show instructions’ link at the top. This will reveal the details about what files are backed up and also will show you the cron job details you will need for the next step.

Next, install & activate Utopia Cron. Cron simply means a process or task that is run on a schedule. It’s a term specific to Linux-based servers, which is typically how WordPress is hosted. Look under Post – U-Cron for the settings page. Take the URL to the cron job you were provided in WP Time Machine and insert here under Full URL. Select a time for it to run, I recommend 3AM, which you would configure as 03:00 (military time). Set it to run every night by entering 24h under How Often. Click Add. I also recommend adding a 2nd job to clean up the cache files. You’ll see a URL for this under WP Time Machine as well. Set this one to run 3 mins later than the first job and you’ll be set. Click on the test button next to each entry once to make sure they run properly.

These are the URLs you wan to use for U-Cron:

http://yourdomain.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-time-machine/cron.php

http://yourdomain.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-time-machine/cron.php?clean=1

That’s really all there is to it. Now your WordPress blog will be backed up every night and you’ll be protected against hacks & server crashes. Below is a review of the pieces necessary for this to work. If you have any further questions please post them below and I’ll do my best to help you out. Enjoy!