How to Back up and Restore a WordPress Blog

January 29, 2009

in blogging,data storage and recovery,Internet

by Tina Gasperson

Whether you have a self-hosted WordPress blog or a free site hosted at WordPress.com, it’s a good idea to back up your blog’s content from time to time, in case an accident happens and your data is damaged or lost. You will also need a site backup if you want to transfer your blog to a new host. There is more than one way to go about the task of backing up and restoring your site, depending on your circumstances and hosting arrangements.

Fortunately, making a copy of your blog content is not difficult to do because WordPress software has automated the process of backing up your data.

In your WordPress 2.7 dashboard, on the left sidebar click on “Tools”. In the resulting drop down menu list you will see “Export”. Click on that, and on the page that comes up, click on “Download export file”. The resulting XML file contains your posts, pages, comments, custom fields, categories, and tags. Save the file on your hard drive where it will be easy to find when it is time to restore the data.

Import to WordPress

Import to WordPress

To restore this information to your current WordPress blog, or transfer it to a new WordPress blog, open the dashboard again, click on “Tools,” and this time select “Import.” Scroll down through all the different types of blogs until you get to WordPress. Click on WordPress, then click “Browse” and select the file you have saved on your hard drive. Then click on “Upload file and import”. WordPress will automatically populate your blog with the content, tags, and fields you restored.

This method of backing up your WordPress site is quick and easy, but it does not restore your registered users, your plugins, or your theme. To perform a more complete and flexible backup of your entire database, you’ll need to have your own self-hosted copy of WordPress, not the free Web site provided by WordPress.com, as well as access to the files on the server, and to a database administration application like phpMyAdmin.

Tina Gasperson (tinahdee@gmail.com), affectionately known as Computer Lady by her family, has been writing about IT, home computing, and the Internet for more than a decade.

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{ 1 comment }

Susana 10.07.15 at 9:58 am

Then we wouldn’t have Colorado, Chicago or other chaos.Black men make them wiohtut marriage. White men are starting to do that as well. But white men also make them IN marriage and then leave the family and make a new family and forget about the other children from the previous marriage, two, three and four times. Yes, I am saying it. Women can’t raise boys to be men. WIthout men raising men, the next generation will have none.What is happening in the USA? Waiting for the irresponsible men to start making excuses.

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