Overview
There are many popular plugins to use for backing up WordPress. You can store your backups on Amazon S3, DropBox, or even DreamObjects. Whenever possible, DreamHost recommends that you limit the number of backups to a reasonable amount, as infinite backups can cause performance issues on your site.
Suggested plugins
- BoldGrid Backup – (free with any DreamHost WordPress plan)
- UpdraftPlus – Natively supports DreamObjects
- BlogVault
- BackupBuddy
- VaultPress
For more information about the DreamObjects service, visit the following article:
It is against DreamHost policy to store personal backups or site backups on the host servers. (This does not apply to VPS and Dedicated Servers.) You should remove any backed up contents for the site so that they are stored locally instead. You can read more about the unlimited policy here:
Manually backing up a WordPress site
You can make a manual backup of your WordPress site using the process below.
Where to run the command?
You must log into your web server via SSH to run the following commands. Visit the following article for full instructions on how to do log into your server in a terminal:
Backing up your site's database using wp-cli
Log into your server in a terminal. Make sure you're in your website directory. Then, run the following command:
[server]$ wp db export ~/backup`date +"%d-%m-%Y"-%T`.sql
Backing up your site files using SSH
Navigate back to your user's home directory. Then, run the following command:
[server]$ zip –r exampledomain.com.zip exampledomain.com
Make sure that you change the command to match your website directory's name.
Downloading your site backup
If your backup .zip and .sql files are smaller than 1GB, you can download them using WebFTP. See the article linked below for more details:
Otherwise, you will need to download any backup files larger than 1GB using FTP. See the article below for more details:
