Solo Technology

When I switched from self-hosting at home to an offsite solution, I had to rethink my backup schemes for my web sites and mysql databases. Previously, the web server was right here under my desk and backups were pretty easy to schedule and automate. Now I no longer “own” the box and had to ponder things a bit… and here’s what I came up with.

[Note: This is the process I use. I'm sharing it with readers because, deep down inside where it matters, I like to share. There is, of course, no warranty or guarantee that this will work for everyone. Use common sense and use at your own risk]

Pre-requisites:

• WordPress database backup plugin - bundled with WP 2.x installations
• WinSCP - SFTP / SCP client. Uses SSH, which leads us to …
• SSH Access to your host. I currently use DreamHost and this was easily done via their administration panel.
• Enough room on your local computer to store the backup. My entire site, including db backups, is under 25MB.

Steps to backup:

• Login to WordPress and go to Manage -> Backup
• Check off the appropriate tables (when in doubt, check ‘em all), choose “Save to Server” and let it rip. When it completes, we now have a database backup stored on the server.
• Fire up WinSCP and connect to host.
• In WinSCP, get your left pane showing the destination directory. The right pane showing the folder containing your web site directory (or, just the blog directory if you don’t want to copy the entire site).
• Select the site to copy and hit F5 to copy
• In the copy dialog, be sure to check “New and updated file(s) only”. First time you make a backup this doesn’t do a thing, but it’ll dramatically speed up subsequent backups!
• Click Copy

That’s about all there is to it. That database backup you made earlier was stored on the server and just got copied down to your local machine as part of the WinSCP copy. Nifty and painless, eh?

Here’s what my WinSCP copy dialog looks like before I start the actual copy:

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