Most of your will agree that backing up your WordPress website is a time-consuming and sometimes, a boring process. Despite being a crucial task, a fair portion of website owners fail to make regular backups of their sites. I sincerely hope you are not one of them.
Nonetheless, there are some ways to make the backup process easier and simpler. There are several excellent free WordPress plugins which let you back up your website without having to do it all by your own. In today’s post, I will discuss about two plugins which allow you to backup your website in Dropbox – UpdraftPlus Backup and Restoration and WordPress Backup to Dropbox
Let’s start with UpdraftPlus.
UpdraftPlus Backup and Restoration
UpdraftPlus is a very popular backup plugin for WordPress. With this plugin, creating backups of your website is super easy. You can also restore the backups easily. While I will show you how to backup your website in Dropbox, you can also save the backup in other cloud services including Google Drive, Rackspace Cloud, OpenStack Swift and DreamObjects.
First of all, install and activate UpdraftPlus in your website. Then, go to Settings > UpdraftPlus Backups. You will be taken to a screen like the following –
Set up UpdraftPlus
To set up different aspects of your backup and to set the intervals, go to the ‘Settings’ tab. From the ‘File backup intervals’ and ‘Database backup intervals’ fields, you can choose the backup frequency of the files and database. You can also choose how many backups you want to save.
From the ‘Include in files backup’ field, you can choose to include the themes, plugins, uploads and any other folder inside of the wp-content folder. And if you want to exclude any folder, there are fields for that too. If you want a report after each backup completes, you can do so by checking the ‘Email’ checkbox.
Connecting UpdraftPlus to Dropbox
Now, you have to connect your website to Dropbox. Before you do that, click ‘Save Changes’ from the bottom of the page. Then, get back to the ‘Settings’ tab and select ‘Dropbox’ from the ‘Choose your remote storage’ drop-down list.
Click the link provided in the ‘Authenticate with Dropbox’ field. You will be taken to the API Request page of Dropbox.
Click the ‘Allow’ button to authenticate UpdraftPlus to connect to your Dropbox account. That completes the setup process. Now we will get to the actual backing up process.
Creating the Backup
Get back to the ‘Current Status’ tab and click the blue ‘Backup Now’ button. A pop-up window will appear. If you don’t want to include the database or any files in the backup, check the respective boxes. Then, click ‘Backup Now’.
As the backup is created, you will notice a progress bar with the name of ‘Backups in progress’. Once the backup is created and uploaded to Dropbox, the filed will disappear automatically. You will get the confirmation in the ‘Last log message’ field.
So, that is how you backup your website to Dropbox by using UpdraftPlus.
WordPress Backup to Dropbox
This is another excellent WordPress plugin which lets you create a complete backup of your website and as the title suggests, save the backups in Dropbox. Once you install and activate the plugin, it will create a new menu item titled ‘WPB2D’ in your website dashboard. Go to WPB2D > Backup Settings and you will be provided with a screen like the following –
Set up WPB2D
Click the ‘Authorize’ button to allow the plugin to connect and save your backups in Dropbox. You will be taken to a page similar to this –
Click ‘Allow’ to authorize WordPress Backup to Dropbox to connect with Dropbox. Now, get back to your website dashboard and go to WPB2D > Backup Settings again. This time, you will see a page like the following –
In that page, you will find some basic information about your Dropbox account, your backup schedule and backup history. In the ‘Settings’ section, you will find an option to save the backup in a sub-folder within the wpb2d folder.
In the ‘Frequency’ field, you will be able to choose the backup frequency. The available options include daily, weekly, fortnightly, Every 4, 8, or 12 weeks. Once you have chosen your desired frequency, select the date and time when the backup should be performed.
Lastly, in the ‘Excluded Files and Directories’ section, you can choose to exclude certain files and/or directories to be excluded from the backup.
Create the Backup
To initiate a new backup, go to WPB2D > Backup Monitor. You will have a page like this –
Click ‘Start Backup’. When the backup starts, you will get a ‘Backup started’ message and a button to stop the backup manually. The Backup Monitor will show you the progress of the backup process.
Once the backup process finishes, you will get a ‘Backup Complete’ message.
Final Words
Backing up your website regularly is a very important task for your website. As there is not any guarantee that you will never need that, it is better to be prepared in advance. And I believe the plugins mentioned in this post can help you with your task.
Let me know which one you like most? And if you are using any other backup plugin, please share your experience with us by leaving a comment below.
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