Ever been writing a new post or page and have the auto save lock up on you?

–> Mod_Security

Get a 404 error when trying to post?

–> Mod_Security

Call up your hosting company and talk to support. Tell them the issues you’re having and ask if mod_security is enabled on your account. More than likely they can disable it (at least temporarily) to see if it fixes the issue. Don’t be afraid to call!

Now, if you’re advanced user and have complete access to your database and server, you can use our handy little backup script to keep everything running smoothly. But for everyone else, you’ll want to install the WordPress Database Backup plugin. Here’s a quick review of how to obtain and configure it so you can sleep easy at night:

1 – In your WordPress admin dashboard, open the Plugins section and click “Add New”

2 – Run a search for “database backup”

3 – The one with the “WP-DB-Backup” title is what you want

4 – To the right, you’ll see the corresponding “install” button, click it to start the automatic installation. Follow any instructions (usually you just click the “Install Now” button within the new window)

5 – Once installation is complete, go to the Tools section and click “Backup” to open the plugin’s options

6 – It’s best to exclude spam and revisions (you don’t really need that to be backed up), however you may wish to include all the tables on the right (this will hold the data for all your various plugins)

7 – Choose the backup to email option. This is important as it gives you a safe place to hold the backup database copies. One trick that works is you set up a free Gmail account specifically to store them. The only issue with this is Google has a 20mb limit to the attachments from email (which is how you will receive the backup). If your database is larger or approaching that size, you will need to find another email that accepts larger attachments or make other arrangements to store the backups. We can help you with that.

8 – Now we will schedule the backups. Make sure you type in the email address correct, choose your tables on the right (best is all of them), then set the schedule. Weekly is the bare minimum, however if you make changes very frequently you may wish to do daily. Be sure to pick an appropriate time (early morning 2am or so is typically a good time)

Just remember to check your backup email account that the databases are being sent to once in a while to make sure you’re still receiving them. Sleep well knowing your data is safe!

A few things to consider (and what I’m assuming) before you use this:

1) MySQL is already setup and the databases are in the default location (/var/lib/mysql)

2) There is a folder already setup to write your backups to (it can be in the same location as your databases to make it easier)

3) You must be logged in as root on the server and already have your root/pass setup for the MySQL administration

Here’s what your script will do for you:

1) At 12 midnight everyday, mysqldump will backup all your databases to the assigned folder and append the current date to the filename, then gzip to compress it.

2)Then at 1am, the second part will check the timestamps and delete any backups that are older than 90 days

And here’s the script and how to set it up:

Be sure to log in to your server as root and type the following -

crontab -e

Then insert the following into your crontab script that opens:
MAILTO=root
0 0 * * * mysqldump -A -u root -ppassword | gzip > /var/lib/mysql/db_backups/mysqlbak`/bin/date +\%F`.gz
0 1 * * * find /var/lib/mysql/db_backups/*.gz -mtime +90 | xargs rm -f

Note: Notice there is no space between the -p and the actual password for your root MySQL account. This is intentional. If it was typed as ”-p password” the job would hang since it will be waiting for the user to type it in manually.

Also note that any errors will be logged to /var/logs/messages -hence the MAILTO=root

P.S. – If you aren’t accustomed to the inner workings of linux and the command line terminal (ie: a newbie), try our how-to on the WordPress Backup Plugin.