This last week a client that I help on occasion who has one of the highest traffic blogs that I have seen lost his MySQL database that runs his WordPress blog. The crash was devastating to his blog and to his business. What is even worse is that he did not have a recent backup of his blog post; lost were 6 months of blog posts and comments.
To prevent this from happening to you, I recommend that every WordPress owner install a WordPress plug-in called WP-DB-Backup. This simple to use and configure blog post database backup allows you to email yourself a backup of your blog posts in MySQL format on a schedule you select.
I routinely backup my blog posts weekly and recommend that all clients and WordPress users do the same. Although you can tell the application to store your backup on your web server, I like the additional security of saving the backup to my own hard disk.
Just make sure that once you install the plug-in that you review it to make sure that your folder is writable. You will access the plug-in control panel from your WordPress “Tools” navigation link. If the directory location is not writable, you will need to correct that to use the plug-in.
Although you may never have a situation when you will need your backup, what if you even do. Will you be wishing you had a backup plan in place like the client I mentioned in the first paragraph or will you be able to get back up and running quickly only losing a day or two of blog posts?