How to export _files_ for backup of site?
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We run an educational site on WordPress.Com which has over the years become a crucial element of an academic “science for kids” program. As the site has multiple authors and editors, it’s easy for mistakes to happen and data to get lost. I don’t see an option to backup the – by now many hundreds – of image files. True, via Tools – Export you can create an xml-file of the posts and comments, but that’s not enough, we need a backup of _all_ content. The instructions at https://en.support.wordpress.com/export/ say you should do a manual download on a file by file basis, but that would be madness with the number of files in our knowledge base.
Why is there no batch option? Or is there? We’d be willing to go Premium if this can take away our worries. Please help us out to preserve our beloved “kids’ knowledge base” in case of calamity!
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hi ademoor,
Currently we do not provide a way to download all image files. This is something we may conceder adding in the future however, I can’t make any guarantees or provide a timeline.We do backup your site on a regular bases for security reasons however.
I would recommend using User Roles to give each student just enough privileges (and not to much). For example, if you set the user role as “Contributor” they will be able to submit a post for review but not add or delete images. If you set them as an “Author” they can add and remove their own posts/images but not others.
You’ll find more on user roles here:
https://en.support.wordpress.com/user-roles/ -
Currently we do not provide a way to download all image files.
this has been ask for many many times over the several years I have helped in the forum – I have even suggested it several times – it would be a very nice addition and a feature that could be bragged about – instead we get the Blue Death Editor, and vague “will be considered” or whatever
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Thanks, bdukes, but we are not giving the kids access to the back-end, they can just view the knowledge base. Over the years, however, we had to give many editors (!) getting Editor-rights, as they need to produce the content of the various modules.
It is not so much malicious intent I am worried about, but just accidents. As the knowledge base is mission-critical to our project, we want it to be fully backed-up. This is just good system admin practice and should be possible.
As auxclass says, why not add it to your feature set to backup the files, if only by FTP-access? This would make WordPress.Com so much more useful and reliable for “serious” users/ It’s really strange that a reputable company like yours does not allow its users to have full control over the security of their content.
Just in case, can we indeed contact you for that “security backup”? How often is on a “regular basis”?
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HI ademoor,
Another option to backup your site would be to export and then import your site into a private test site on a regular bases. This will give you a full backup of your site.
For security reasons we cannot provide any FTP access to WordPress.com sites.
If this is a must have feature I would encourage you to conceder moving your site to a self-hosted WordPress.org site. This self-hosted version of WordPress while is a bit more work to maintain will give you more options for flexibility.
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This will give you a full backup of your site.
I thought the transfer only moved media that was used in Pages & Posts – not the whole media library contents – yes maybe a nit pick thing for the odd lost media files
For security reasons we cannot provide any FTP
Agreed – and FTP would make support more difficult since the forum would have additional questions on how to set up FTP – – – but my suggestion several times was just a streaming download type thing with a button the blog owner could click on – also have some sort of incremental ability
As blogs get longer lived, and PC’s get changed and the shift to more mobile posting with phones & related items the ability to loose the original files gets easier – and there have been some people that had the images on lost when their PC crashed or was stolen – – yes I know we should all have an elaborate backup system on several different drives and maybe in the cloud – which can get a bit spendy depending on how elaborate things are done
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I thought the transfer only moved media that was used in Pages & Posts – not the whole media library contents – yes maybe a nit pick thing for the odd lost media files
That’s correct, However, if you do add any unattached media to a private page the export will be able to pull those images.
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Bdukes, I have 3 remaining questions:
– 1. How to do that export (including media files)? The instructions at
are ambiguous. It says that an XML file (= without media files?) is created, but also kind of suggests that _all_ content (including media files) can be downloaded. How to get the
– 2. Can we safely do that export/import to a test site without affecting the live current site in any way?
– 3. Just in case all else fails: can we indeed contact you for that “security backup”? How often do you backup on a “regular basis”?
NB We like WordPress.com exactly because it takes away most of our worries about site maintenance, as we don’t really have that expertise and we’d like to focus on creating and using the content.
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How to do that export (including media files)?
At this time, we do not allow you to download the media files uploaded to WordPress.com The XML export will contain links to the media files but not the files themselves.
What this means is that when you import the file into another site if the images are at location specified in the export file they will be fetched from that location. If not, they will not be imported.
What specifically about the documentation is unclear? We are always working to improve our documentation to make things more clear.
Can we safely do that export/import to a test site without affecting the live current site in any way?
Exporting your site’s content has no effect on your current site, nor does importing into a new site.
Just in case all else fails: can we indeed contact you for that “security backup”? How often do you backup on a “regular basis”?
That is not a service that WordPress.com offers. As I mentioned, A self-hosted (WordPress.org) site might be a better bet for you if this is crucial to your site building plans.
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Thanks for the additional explanation, bdukes. Re your question:
What specifically about the documentation is unclear?
At
it is stated “It’s probably a good idea to download all your content, “, which refers to that XML export option above. However, your less tech-savvy user (which should be a sizable group, as otherwise they would self-host) could wrongly assume that the XML file also includes the media files. Only to find out after disaster has struck that they should have regularly imported that XML file into test sites, to really preserve ALL their data.
Furthermore, the documentation is all about the export to another platform, not about doing the export for backup purposes. So in my opinion, you should really clarify how to ensure backups are done properly. This is all the more important because you apparently don’t offer security backups.
Moreover, in the “Backups proper” page
you say:
If your blog is hosted here at WordPress.com, we handle all necessary backups. If a very large meteor were to hit all the WordPress.com servers and destroy them beyond repair, all of your data would still be safe and we could have your blog online within a couple of days (after the meteor situation died down, of course).
But if you want to back up your blog content manually, you are free to do so by using the Tools -> Export option described above. This is certainly still a good idea, especially if you’ve assigned additional users to your blog. Editors and administrators have the ability to delete any posts or pages, and there is no way to recover material that they remove from your blog.
This is kind of contradictory. You do provide backups in case of meteor strikes, but not in case data get lost by user actions? Then you shouldn’t say “if you want to do them manually”, as the previous suggests that if you don’t want to do them manually, they are done automatically.
Summing up, your backup-procedure info is not completely clear and distributed over 2 pages
https://en.support.wordpress.com/export/#download-your-content
https://en.support.wordpress.com/export/#backupsIt would be better to describe the “how to make regular backups of your site” and give more detailed step-by-step instructions.
As I said, we don’t have technical expertise to do our own backups, so self-hosting is not an option. We would be willing to pay for such an exception-service, so your management may want to reconsider your services to become an even greater company
NB In case a very large meteor were to strike, I think getting blogs up and running would be the last of our worries :-)
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