How to make a WordPress backup and migrate with BackUpBuddy

A long time ago, our team compared BackupBuddy and BackWPup, two of the most popular plugins for creating WordPress backups.

While we decided they were both great plugins, we never truly taught people how to make a WordPress backup using BackupBuddy or BackWPup.

We start by looking at how to create a WordPress backup on BackupBuddy and how and why to migrate the data to another website.

How to get BackupBuddy

Before we can even perform the backup, we will need to retrieve BackupBuddy. It is found on the iThemes website as it is a premium plugin. This plugin does cost money ($80), but it does a nice job backing up all of your data, and it synchronizes with their other web services, like the importer, so it has a lot of utility.

BackupBuddy is a good plugin. While it is premium, it works very well with our premium themes, which offer guaranteed support.

How to create a WordPress backup using BackupBuddy

The first thing you must do, similar to any other plugin on WordPress, is install BackupBuddy on your website. You can do this by going to the “Plugins” section, selecting “Add New,” and then going to the “Upload” section. Select the .zip file from your computer’s hard drive, and it will upload to your website from there.

Once you have activated the plugin, BackupBuddy displays as its own element on the left sidebar of the WordPress dashboard. All of the plugin’s options are found underneath that tab.

The first thought would be to go to the “Backup” section of BackupBuddy, and you would be right if you thought that.

By selecting “Backup,” you are taken to a page where you can simply back up the database or the entire website and its contents.

By clicking on one of the large boxes, you are taken to another page where a full backup of the website is made.

It’s that simple.

You can then click the “download zip file” button to store the backup on your hard drive physically.

Schedule a WordPress backup with BackupBuddy

More importantly than manually hitting the backup button, you can schedule backups to happen when YOU want them to by clicking on the “Scheduling” button underneath the BackupBuddy section.

This is a very simple page, where you choose how often to back up your WordPress website and where it goes.

You can have backups happen automatically and then go to Amazon S3 or Dropbox, for example.

Stop website attacks with Sucuri Malware Scanner

The other cool thing about BackupBuddy is that it has a malware scanner, brought to you by Sucuri Security, to help detect attacks before they happen. While WordPress is generally a very secure platform, you may be in trouble if you do not update quickly as upgrades to WordPress are released.

Having a malware scanner adds another level of awesome to this plugin. The benefit of the malware scanner is that you can detect malware before you back up your website. That way, you know you always have a secure backup of a secure website.

You don’t want to create a backup that is just going to get corrupted again once reinstalled.

How to migrate a WordPress website using BackupBuddy

Migrating content allows for two things. One purpose of migration is to bring a website back to life if it is taken down or otherwise compromised.

The other common purpose of content migration is to move content from a local host or test server on a new website to a live site.

How to migrate WordPress to another server

Go to the migrate and restore section of the BackupBuddy section. A new page will appear, displaying several options.

If you are looking to migrate a website from one server to another or from a local host to another, you would simply use the “automated migration” option.

Click on the “migrate data” link and choose which server you want the data on your FTP or local host. Of course, you must know the credentials, such as username and password, to allow this to work.

Restoring a WordPress backup to the same website

You cannot use the automated script if you restore a WordPress backup to the same website. Instead, you must download the ImportBuddy PHP script and go manual.

This requires fancier footwork, but in essence you are uploading your downloaded backup file and the ImportBuddy script to the original FTP and then launching it inside your website.

Before you can download the script, you must create a password for ImportBuddy in the BackupBuddy settings section.

REMEMBER THAT PASSWORD; you will need it.

Watch a video

We also ran a video on how to back up to WordPress using BackupBuddy, which is right here too.

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If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to comment below. We are a premium WordPress agency here to answer questions and help out our customers.