I’ve talked about backing up stuff before in my blog post Computer Maintenance 101. In light of the recent issues with WP regarding disappearing and/or not working links and/or headers and other stuff, it might be a good idea to put that idea in practice.
“Shamelessly promoting your own articles again, aren’t you? Truly unsightly.”
Hehe, well, it’s all about sharing the wisdom!
Anyway, here’s how to back up your WordPress data safely by exporting it to your local hard drives:
- Go to your Dashboard
- Go to the Manage tab
- Click on Export
- Select which user/blog you wish to export (If applicable, otherwise just pick your own blog)
- Select the Download Export File. Then pick a good location to save the xml file and hit save
To import the data which you’ve backed up, simply:
- Go to your Dashboard
- Go to the Manage tab
- Click on Import
- Select WordPress (if applicable you can of course select from a different source)
- Browse to the (XML) file with your data and hit “Upload file and import”
Do this regularly, especially after big changes which took you quite some time to manage, and you’ll save yourself from a lot of potential trouble and continue with a good WordPress experience! As WordPress, while not perfect, is a great service offering enough tools to help you go through all kinds of problems.
“Especially considering the fact that WP already backs everything up.“
Still, it can’t hurt to do this stuff manually, so you’re also the holder of the latest backup, or at least the most essential back up that you wish. And you can also save more of them whenever you want, so you have a bit of a track history and can choose which one to “reinstate”. My point is: you can’t go wrong with backing it up yourself regularly!
