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Install WordPress Backup Plugins

Some of the plugins I consider essential for anyone running a website on WordPress include those for backing up the site. You never want to lose your articles, and you also don’t want to lose all the work you’ve done tweaking the WordPress installation.

Get The WP Files AND The Database

Sometimes, people backup the site files (perhaps using their FTP client), but miss backing up the SQL database. The database is where all the articles and comments are stored. Or the reverse happens – their host backs up the database, but they fail to back up their WordPress configuration, and they lose hours of tweaking and configuration.

My Preferred Plugin For Backing Up the Database

For the database, I use WordPress Database Backup by Austin Matzko. I like that I can backup to my computer or to an email account. Sending backups to a Gmail account works well for many of my clients. You can backup at any time you choose, or schedule backups hourly, daily or weekly. You can choose optional tables to include in the backup – in general, if you’re unsure, include them.

Go to Tools, Backup in your administration panel to find the customization settings. While it depends on your frequency of posting, weekly backups work well for many sites.

My Preferred Plugin For Backing Up the WordPress Files

WordPress Backup (by BTE) will backup the upload directory (images), current theme directory, and plugins directory to a zip file, which can be mailed to an email account. Sometimes this file can get rather large, particularly if you have a lot of images, but for smaller sites it can be a very useful plugin. Again, you can choose hourly, daily, or weekly backups. Weekly is usually good for most sites unless you’re tweaking your theme a lot, or posting very frequently. The configuration for the plugin will be found under Settings, WordPress Backup.

When Something Goes Wrong

I’ve learned that the first thing to try when something goes wrong, before restoring backups, is to try disabling all plugins. If you can’t log into your site administration, you can do this through FTP. I’ll put something up soon about how to do that. If you know how to FTP into your site, just rename all your plugin folders. That will cause them to be “not found” and automatically disabled by WordPress. Often that’s enough to get you back into your site administration.

Automatic Backups Take Away Stress

It’s a good feeling to know that you have recent copies of everything when something goes wrong. Particularly before you do anything major, like upgrading WordPress, make sure you have fresh backups.  You don’t want to be reduced to using the Wayback Machine to try to recover your articles, particularly since it usually only lists site pages more than six months old. Install these free WordPress plugins, and you’ll always have recent backups.

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Today We’ll Create Your Business Website

By the end of this lesson, you’ll have your business website up and running. It won’t yet be the thing of beauty it will grow to be, but you’ll be well on your way there. You’ll soon be able to change the appearance of your site. You’ll be able to add posts or pages to create content that will attract your prospective clientele. Let’s get to it!

Step Zero:

As a prerequisite to this lesson, you should have purchased a domain name and Deluxe Hosting with GoDaddy. See our previous What-Why-How lessons for details. That’s where your “under $10″ costs were. These lessons are free.

Get Logged In To Your Hosting Account

You’ll need to be logged in at GoDaddy and in the Manage Account section of your Hosting, just as you were in our last lesson. If you didn’t complete that lesson, please do before continuing.

Here in the Hosting Control Panel, you’ll give the instructions to set up your WordPress software and the database it needs to run. I know it sounds complicated, but it’s quite straightforward. All you’ll need is a piece of paper to write down the passwords you’re going to set up. It’s important not to lose them!

12 Step Installation of Your WordPress Website

1) From inside your Hosting Control Center, choose the big Your Applications button. It looks like this:

2) Once you’ve done that, you’ll choose Blogs from the list of applications on the left side of the screen:

3) And then, as you’ve guessed, just choose WordPress.

4) Once you’ve done that, you’ll need to be sure to press the Install Now button.

5) You’ll be asked which of your domains you want to install on. Just choose the radio button beside the domain name you want to use, and click Continue.

6) You’ll need to enter a Database Description. Something like DB for WordPress 2.9 on yournewcompany.com

7) You’ll also need a Database Password. It’s case-sensitive. It must be 7-14 characters, with at least one lower case and upper case letter, and one number. Do not make it the same as the password for your GoDaddy account. WRITE DOWN your Database Password. Then hit Next.

8 ) In this step, you choose your install directory. Simply empty out any text in the box. It should be empty, because you will be installing WordPress in the root directory. This is true whether you will be using your blog or a page as your “Home” page. Make sure it looks like the following picture, then hit Next.

9) Now you’ll be creating your Admin Name. This is the Userid you’ll use when logging in to your WordPress website. You’ll probably want to keep the Admin Name simple. WRITE IT DOWN.

10) You’ll also enter the Admin Password you want to use when logging into your WordPress website. Don’t use the same password you used for the database. Don’t use something that is a word in the dictionary, or easily guessed, like your pet’s name. WRITE IT DOWN.

11) Add your real Email address where requested. That’s where you’ll get email if you forget your password for logging in to your WordPress site.

12) Enter the name of the blog (site). You can change it later, when you log into your site’s WordPress installation. Hit Finish.

What To Do While Awaiting The Birth

At this point, you’ll just have to wait patiently for the WordPress installation to complete. You can log out of GoDaddy. It will probably take from twenty minutes to an hour for your site to be ready. While you’re waiting, please make sure you’ve recorded your Database Password, Admin Name, and Admin Password and stored them in a safe place.

You could also post a comment below, announcing the birth of your new site! Or bake cookies and send me some – anything with chocolate works.

When Your Site Is Ready

Go to your website – http://www.yournewcompany.com and see whether you see anything there. Refresh the page if needed until you see the blue WordPress default site display. When you do, you can log in.  Go to http://www.yournewcompany.com/wp-admin

You should be prompted for a Username and Password. Those are the Admin Name and Admin Password you wrote down a few minutes ago.

Now you can begin to explore WordPress’ incredibly intuitive interface. Try creating and publishing a Post, to start.

I know your site isn’t quite as beautiful as you’d like yet, but we’ll be explaining how to find and install Themes very soon. Congratulations, you have a website that you built on your own!

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