This post is part of a series put together after I lost my blog on a holiday weekend. Thankfully because I had good backups in place I was able to restore it entirely aside from a few comments (which I was also able to replace). In this post I will share how to add a backup plugin to your WordPress blog so that you don't lose anything: for example, if your computer crashes, heaven forbid your web host crashes and loses your blog, your blog randomly breaks or any other random mishap that can occur. You spend a lot of your time and effort authoring your blog, you don't want to lose it just because you didn't take a few minutes to set up a backup system.

To the best of my understanding, there are two distinctive areas that need to be backed up in order to fully recreate your blog in the event of disaster.

1. The database which holds your posts, plugins, settings, dynamic user-created content
2. The site files which hold your theme, plugins, uploads and images (accessible by FTP).

You can't do one or the other, you must do both.

This is a Step by Step Tutorial with Screenshots to Show you How to Backup Your WordPress Database Daily – Very Easily Done with a Plug-In

Fortunately, there is an easy way to automatically back up your database, and I will tell you how to add a backup plugin (or any other plugin for that matter) with this post.

Among the many backup plugins available, I use WordPress Database Backup aka WP-DB-Backup which was recommended to me by Ms. Crafty when she migrated my blog from blogger to WordPress.

If you don't have a backup plugin already, go get one right now. You say you don't know how? Okay, I'll show you, step by step.

1. Log in to your WordPress account. On the left hand side you'll see a button that says Plugins.

2. Click on Plugins one time and it will drop open and show you several other choices like Installed, Add New, Editor, etc.

3. Click on Add New.

4. You will see a screen that looks like the following – type backup database in the search box, making sure “Term” is selected. Click Search Plugins.

5. I have circled WP-DB-Backup which was recommended to me.

6. Click Install Now. You should receive a pop up message asking “Are you sure you want to install this plugin? Verify that you clicked on the correct one, then click OK.

Now you'll see this screen:

7. Click Activate Plugin.

8. You will be returned to the previous screen and will see that the Plugin has been Activated. Scroll down to see that it is present.

9. Go to Tools and Backup to set up the plug in. It is fairly straightforward. See below screenshots for the settings I use.

I recommend that you go to BACKUP OPTIONS and email a backup of your database to yourself immediately, then go down further to SCHEDULED BACKUP and set up your scheduled backup. I highly recommend having your blog backed up at least once daily.