It was a long journey before I came to Backup WD. So I will start from the beginning.
My purpose is full backup of all wordpress files and database to Dropbox and it shouldn’t take too much time or resources on the shared hosting resources that I am using. There are only 2 times in the span of more than 10 years of this blog that I had to restore it manually from backup. But its always great to have a backup in hand with you at all time. It won’t hurt you to have a backup, but it certainly hurt you if you don’t have a backup when your server goes down.
I was using wordpress-backup-to-dropbox plugin by for my backup purposes a long time back. Then it got discontinued. Then I got to WP Time Capsule. It was working well for me until they stopped the free services. Now I was stuck.
I tried many plugins like UpdraftPlus, BackWPup, Duplicator, BlogVault, XCloner, Backup by Supsystic, Backup Guard etc. I am sure that there are many fans for these plugins but I somehow they weren’t working for me. Now I was cycling through each backup plugin in the wordpress repository. I was sure that there was no hope left. Choosing the best WordPress hosting is by far the most important aspect of building a website.
Then I came across Backup WD by WebDorado. I had glanced at it before but I didn’t try it earlier because it wasn’t having that many installations or reviews. So I was skeptical – anyways I installed it (didn’t have much options left after this…lol..).
After installation, the setting up the plugin with dropbox was not easy as the other plugins. It was confusing, the documentation is not that good (according to me). A new api app have to be created at dropbox to work with this plugin.
Everything had to be configured properly – I created a new job with sync option to dropbox. Made sure that all the folders in the site are selected (by default not all folders are selected, so please make sure that you select the required folders), the the database (I selected all tables in database and also Gzip compression for the database). Also choose the file deletion option – that is un-tick the “Keep deleted files from previous backup sync” to remove the deleted plugin, theme or other files.
I used the sync option so after the first backup, only the changed files and folders will be backed afterwards. Now the first backup took a lot of time, but after this its fast. You can schedule this job, I haven’t done it. Since I am the only user at this site, I manually backup after each post (I am not a very frequent blogger).
Now this plugin meets my requirements – that is to have a backup of the entire working wordpress site (including files and database) in my dropbox. My requirement does not take into consideration the restoration of the site. As long as I have the working backup with me (in my dropbox), I can restore it manually to any server and have the domain pointed to that server ip.
Advantages of Backup WD
* The free version can be used in mutliple websites for backing up or syncing your data to dropbox
Disadvantages of Backup WD
* Its a pain in the a$$ to configure it – especially if you are a newbie to wordpress. For me I get to know it, so not a big issue.
* Documentation – or lack of it..
This plugin may not be suitable to everyone. It will fit the purpose of backing up your wordpress website to dropbox. But for the rest of the purposes, there are lots of plugins (like the ones mentioned above) that are available in WordPress repository. One of them should fit your need.
I am giving it 4/5 rating because it works for my purpose very well..
Please do check up my views about other wordpress plugins.