backup media files
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Hi Folks,
we’re just setting up a new research oriented blog / website, which has a large number of archival academic articles. While backing up the wordpress data is straightforward using tools->export, there doesn’t seem to be a convenient way of backing up the actual media files (such as images, pdfs and so on).
What’s the approved technique for maintaining a complete local backup of a wordpress.com site?
cheers,
Dr Christopher Betts
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hi there,
Is there a particular reason you need local backups of your site?
We have thorough backups in place at the server level, plus use our own global servers along with a larger CDN for performance and redundancy reasons.
Which is all to say there is no need to worry about the safety of your data here.
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Sure, there are lots of reasons.
a: WordPress might change their terms of service in such a way that makes continuing to host with them impractical.
b: WordPress might suffer a security compromise of the order of Sony, wiping out both sites and archives
c: WordPress might be pressured legally to pull our site based on someone disagreeing with the content of one of the published articles.
d: Changes in Australian law might lead to the widespread censorship of the wordpress.com domain, based on some of their sites being judged unacceptable by the Australian censor
e: We might suffer a security compromise and lose control of our wordpress domain… and so on, and so on. All of these are pretty unlikely, but anybody who hosts with a cloud service and relies on that same cloud service for backup is being grossly irresponsible from a risk management point of view… hence we always back up locally.
The question really is how much effort is involved, and part of our ongoing assessment of any cloud service is how difficult it is to maintain such a backup, and whether the service is a ‘lobster trap’ for data. WordPress seems pretty good so far, and I’ve already backed our existing site up with httrack, but it would be nice to know that there was a standard mechanism for backing up media built in to the platform (as there is for many 3rd party wordpress hosting sites).
cheers,
Dr Christopher Betts
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WordPress seems pretty good so far, and I’ve already backed our existing site up with httrack, but it would be nice to know that there was a standard mechanism for backing up media built in to the platform (as there is for many 3rd party wordpress hosting sites).
Because our backups are made at the server level (and include many sites/accounts together) we don’t have a mechanism for preparing individual backups for sites. We do however take backup and redundancy VERY seriously, so it is not something I would worry about.
However, if this is at all a concern for you then I definitely recommend a self-hosted WordPress (also called “.org”) site.
You will need to manage your own server, software updates, and security, but you will also have direct access to all files on the server, and the freedom to implement any backup schema you desire.
The good news is that migrating to self-hosted WordPress is pretty easy, so if you feel that is a better fit for you, I’m happy to point you in the right direction.
Hope that helps. Please let me know if you have any further questions.
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