Its a good idea to always have backup ready, be it for your local computer or the server where you host the websites. Many webhosts claim that they always have backup ready, but its a good idea to create a backup manually and have it stored on your local computer also. In this post, you’ll learn how to automatically backup website, database and emails to the cloud using third party backup service – Dropmysite.
Those who have small sites can regularly take backups, because it won’t take much time to download the backup. But what about those users whose website backup size is in GB’s. These type of users may not backup regularly, as they’ll need to download that backup and it can take much time, depending on the backup size and internet speed. Many popular web hosting providers offer free backup service. Those who have virtual private server (VPS) or a dedicated hosting plan can configure these backup options. Shared hosting plans also offer backup service, but it may not be that frequent.
Automatically Backup Website, Database and Emails with Dropmysite
Dropmysite is an online tool that helps to automate website, database and email backups. This service does not just backups html, CSS, php and images files but it can also backup database and emails. The data is stored securely on the cloud and Dropmysite encrypts all its data so that your stored data does not fall in the hands of any other person. The site uses Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology to encrypt and protect your information.
Dromysite offers three plans – Basic (free), Pro 50 ($9.99 per month) and Pro 100 ($19.99 per month). The main difference between all these plans is that Basic plan offers 2 GB of free storage space, while Pro 50 and Pro 100 offers 50 GB and 100 GB storage space respectively. For starters, 2 GB plan is enough. Go ahead and sign up with Dropmysite.
Once you’re registered, login to the site and go to Dashboard. From here, you can select which type of backup do you want to perform, whether it is website, database or emails. Let’s say you want to backup your website, click on “websites” tab (which is the default landing tab) and then on “Drop a site”.
Next you’ll get a screen where you need to fill out details like protocol (FTP or SFTP), port number, host name, user name and password. After entering all these details, click on “Add FTP” button.
Next you will be prompted to schedule the FTP backup. Schedule backup to daily, weekly or monthly. Also you can configure other options like time, which day to backup and timezone. When configuring these options, do note that if you’re using the basic free plan then there is a storage limit of 2 GB. For security reasons, you won’t be able to delete the backup for 30 days.
To backup database and emails, click on the respective tabs and follow the on screen instructions. The process is not that complicated.
Want to get more free storage space on Dropmysite? They also have a referral program through you can share that referral link and and get an additional 256MB for you and your friends (up to 4GB).
Dropmysite is an third party independent backup solution. Its a good idea to backup your website and have a copy ready on another server also. No software installation or any lengthy process, such use this service and your backup is ready.
There’s one doubt that can come to the minds of many. Are you comfortable enough to add the confidential FTP and other information in Dropmysite?
Also see: Backup WordPress to Amazon S3
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