BackWPup is a plugin for backing-up WordPress blogs and it provides the best options to backup your blog successfully.

Why to backup your blog?

Well, in a time of constant security threats, every site needs to be backed-up once in a while, not only because of hackers or spammers, but because of all other problems that may appear, like: server problems, security attacks, viruses and malware or more. So it is good for your site to be backed-up, for avoiding all future inconveniences.

BackWPup menu

After the installation of BackWPup plugin, a BackWPup menu appears in the left side, containing 7 options:

• Jobs – where you can see the backup jobs for the plugin.
• Add new – add a new backup job.
• Working – the in-progress backup.
• Logs – the logs after the backup.
• Backups – where the backups are managed.
• Tool – here you can restore database or import jobs settings.
• Settings – set up where emails to be sent, the Jobs, the Logs, the admin bar, the http authentication, and wp-cron settings.

We must say that, in order for plugin to work fine, the php-curl extension must be activated.

Settings

The Settings option allows you to set-up the email address used in jobs – for sending backups or log files, the logs and jobs options – like: log file folder, the maximum log files in folder, maximum retries for job steps and for job script retries and also the http authentication (username and password), you can choose if you want to disable the WP-Cron and use your host`s Cron Job and you also can use cron service of backwpup.com.

Add new job

Job Type

For creating a new job, first of all, from the right side, you must choose the Job Type.

Your options are:

• WP XML Export.
• Database Backup.
• File Backup.
• Optimize Database Tables.
• Check Database Tables.

Job Schedule

Here you can schedule the backups hourly, daily, weekly or monthly on a specific hour and minute. Or, if you want an advanced scheduling, you can set the specific day of week, day of month, month and the hours and minutes of the job running.

Backup File and Send Log

Here you can set the Backup File Prefix and Format and also the e-mail address where you want to receive notifications after the backups are done.

Database Jobs

Here you can create and set up a new backup job. You select which database tables to use or set Database mentenance mode, like below:

File Backup

This option allows you to choose specifically which blog folders (from root, Content, Plugins, Themes or Blog Uploads) to choose for backing-up.

Also, you can write down the path of folders to include or file/folders to exclude from backup.

Then you can choose from many destination options:

• to Folder – you must specify the full path of desired folder and also you can set the maximum backup files in folder

• to E-mail – you must enter your email address and the maximum file size for sending the backups.

• to FTP Server – if you want that your backup to be sent to your FTP server, you must enter the FTP access dates, like hostname, port, username, password and the folder an server, where the backup to be put in.

• to DropBox – here you can login to your DropBox account or create a new one, and choose the root and folder for the backup.

• to SugarSync, Amazon S3, Google Storage, Microsoft Azure and Rackspace Cloud – here you can login to your account or create a new one, and choose the root, the bucket or the container, and the folder for the backup.

Jobs

Here are stored all the created jobs, with information about the name of the job, status, size, last run and next run. Each job can be edited, copied, exported, deleted or ran.

Working

When a job is ran, the backup evolution appears here. It looks like this:

Backups and Logs

After the running, the resulted backups are shown in Backups, with info about the containing folder, file size and the run time and the logs appear in Logs.

Tools

Here you can import job settings by uploading a file.

Support

BackWPup plugin offers support through it`s site forum, where you can choose the topic that you need, from many pages. You can also check out the Bug Reports, Feature Request and Security and also a section of FAQ on the site should answer you to almost all questions.

Conclusions

• BackWPup is a useful, easy-to-use and set-up plugin for backing-up both your WordPress file and database, as well as clean and optimize your database.
• It is a great plugin which eliminates the memory issues caused by other backup plugins, because it runs several jobs that creates smaller backup files, easier to handle.
• As a minus, the plugin site doesn`t contain all the needed information about the plugin and the documentation is not available yet.