How to Backup Your Wordpress Site
Running a Wordpress powered website is easy to setup and maintain but there are administrative functions that you should tend to such as backing up your Wordpress database. A Wordpress powered site doesn't store pages in the traditional sense. Page content is stored and maintained in a MySQL database and when a link is clicked on a page, the content for the page is dynamically created. If something tragic were to happen to your MySQL database, you're Wordpress site would simply stop functioning.
Depending on how frequently your site is updated, you should probably try and backup your MySQL database at least weekly. If you have purchased our custom Wordpress package, you don't need to worry about this because we backup your site for you daily. If, however, you purchased one of our personal or business packages, installed Wordpress from your Site Manager, then you need to know how to backup your Wordpress database.
The easiest approach to backing up your Wordpress database is to use phpMyAdmin, which gives you access to all the databases setup on your account. You can easily copy, rename, delete and modify tables in your database. Here are the steps involved to backup your Wordpress database.
1. Login to phpAdmin. You can find phpAdmin on your site by going to www.yourdomainname.com/pma. The username and password is the same as your hosting account login.
2. The list of installed databases will be listed down the left hand column. The Wordpress database is located near the end of the list and is by default named "wordpress". Click the "wordpress" database to view the tables.
3. You'll find the database menu functions listed as tabs across the top of the page. They include Structure, SQL, Search, Query, etc. By default you'll be in the Structure tab.
4. Click the Export tab and then check the options to specify how you want to export the database.
The only checkbox you need check is the "Save as File" option. Click the "Go" button and in the File Save dialog box, navigate to the folder and enter the filename you want to use.
The saved file will by default have a .sql extension. This file contains everything you need to completely restore the Wordpress tables to the state they were in when you exported the tables.
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