How To Backup And Resurrect Your WordPress Blog

The other night, I almost died when I couldn’t log in to this site anymore. Ok that was a bit melodramatic, but I’m sure your reaction would be close to that as well if your blog of so many years suddenly conks out on you.

In my particular case, it was the index.html file that got lost, or so the error message say. I’m not sure where it went but I kept on getting the same message whenever I tried to open my site.

I knew it wasn’t time for heroics so I immediately requested for a live chat with a technical person from iPower. Ipower is my hosting provider and they are doing a fantabulous job of assisting me everytime. The technical person told me to just uninstall my wordpress setup and reinstall it again. I wasn’t sold on the idea because I knew for certain that if I do that, all my contents would be up in smoke. It was also aggravated by the fact that it’s been ages since I backed up my site.
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I voiced my concern to the techsupport guy and he gave me a step by step guide on how to ‘export’ the SQL database that holds all of my contents. Because we were only chatting, I knew that there’s bound to be something that may have been overlooked in that instruction.

I searched high and low all over the internet to look for simpler methods on how to uninstall and reinstall my blog without losing anything. The internet being what it is, I found the answer that I was looking for in this post. On top of that I also checked out the tutorials in iPower.com which proved very helpful. I also knew that once I uninstall wordpress, all my customizations, the plugins that I use, the themes; all of them will be gone, so I copied all my wordpress folders to another directory in my hosting site’s file manager.

After I’ve got my SQL database backed up and my wordpress folders safely in another directory, I proceeded to uninstall my wordpress all the while keeping my fingers crossed. I then proceeded to reinstall wordpress.

Once installed, I overwrote the newly created wordpress folders with the files that I kept safely in another directory. Once done, I opened my new wordpress and I have to say I felt a sinking feeling in my gut when what showed was a messed up theme with only one ‘Hello World’  post.

Still, following the instructions in the WordPress Documentation post, I went to mySQLadmin and proceeded to import the SQL backup that I saved in my local computer.
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Just one note here, when you do your initial SQL backup, you can zip your backup so the download time won’t be that long. When you do the import or upload in mySQLadmin, you can upload the zip file in its entirety. No need to unzip it first. mySQLadmin will automatically unzip it for you.

Since my zipped SQL backup was big, I got timed out the first time, and again I had a very uneasy feeling thinking that all may have been lost. When I imported the same zipped SQL again, it finally went through. I again reopened my wordpress blog, and lo and behold, everything was as it was. No lost image, no lost post. It’s as if nothing happened.

RECAP

So if you’re not a very techy guy and you found yourself in the same situation that I did, remember these things:

1. Backup your SQL file. Follow the instructions contained in the wordpress post to backup your SQL file.
2. Save the current version of your wordpress folders and files before uninstalling. Keep it in a safe place, whether in another folder in your hosting account or in your local computer.
3. Proceed with the uninstall/reinstall of wordpress.
4. Replace the new folders/files created by the new installation with the wordpress folders/files you saved/kept.
5. Go to the database that was created when you reinstalled the wordpress. Usually you can go there by going to your mySQLadmin and clicking on administer.
6. Proceed to import the zipped SQL you saved in your local computer following the instructions in the WordPress Post I mentioned.
7. Open your blog. Everything should be peachy.

LESSON LEARNED

The lesson I got here is to backup my wordpress SQL database and back it up often. I’m thinking of doing a twice a month backup starting now. You never know what happens in the future so it’s better to be prepared.

One quick way of ensuring that you don’t lose your content is to just go to your wordpress blog’s dashboard, go to tools, and then export your blog. When you need to reinstall your blog, you can go back to tools, click on import and then upload the wordpress xml file that you exported.

The long method was the one I discussed above. I hope this is helpful.
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featured photo from chuckegg.com

You may want to read the following related posts as well:

1. Backup Data Properly
2. Go, Blog! Now In WordPress 2.7
3. Business Continuity Plan For Your Blog
4. Moving WordPress Blog From One Host To Another
5. Google’s Page Rank (PR) Scheduled Update
6. THE WordPress SEO Guide
7. 20 Free Poker Blog WordPress Templates

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