Backing Up Your Blog

In relation to blog hacking, here are the steps on how you can back up your WP blog.

Make sure you do this weekly so just in case something bad happens, you’ll only lose a week, not years of memories.

Your database
1. If you have a Cpanel or something similar, go to your Databases section and click on PhpMyAdmin.

2. Select the database name that you used for your blog by clicking on it. You should see the list of tables for your database.

3. Click the Export link and check ‘Save as file’ to download your database and save it on your local.

Your wordpress files
All that you need is in the wp-contents folder. Every file that you upload using the WP dashboard is stored at /wp-contents/uploads/. Your plugins and themes are also stored under the wp-contents folder so make sure you make a back up of the whole wp-contents folder.

Via WP Dashboard
1. Go to Manage > Export
2. Click Download Export File
3. Save the *.xml on your local computer

Now you’ve successfully backed up your blog. Usually, only the last part (Via WP Dashboard) is the only thing that you need but if you’re moving to a new host or restoring a site, you’ll need to upload your old wp-contents folder as well.

When the time comes that you need to use these backups:
1. Just make a clean install of the latest version of WordPress using those one click installs or manually if you prefer.

2. Once your new blog is up, go to Manage > Import > Select WordPress from the list. Find the *.xml file that you downloaded before and click submit. All your blog postings, tags, categories, comments should will now be imported.

3. To restore your old blog’s look and feel, just upload the whole wp-contents folder to your new wp-contents folder. This will upload all plugins, themes and photos from your old blog.

4. Go to Design and select the theme that you want and activate all desired plugins.