Let’s face it. You don’t want to lose all of the hard work you’ve put on your blog or website.

But what if your site get hacked or get infected by virus? What if something goes wrong with the hosting server?

It would be difficult to get it back unless you have a backup. A backup can save you from danger!

Backing up your WordPress site is must. At the same time, you have to decide where you will keep your backup. I’ve noticed a lot of website owners keep their backup on hosting server. It’s not a good idea as your server might get crashed.

Here are some ideal criteria for a good backup.

• Ability to backup both database and files.
• Maintain a backup schedule.
• Keep backups in different places like cloud storage, hard drive etc.
• Backup shouldn’t be saved on the same server.
• Easy to access backups.

With keep in mind all the above criteria, Cloud Storage should be the best choice.

Cloud Storage is becoming the best solution to store your backup files. It’s reliable, secure and easy to use.

Popular providers like Dropbox, Amazon S3, iCloud, Box.net etc allow you to backup your files. In this post, I will be sharing how to backup your WordPress site to Dropbox.

Dropbox is a popular cloud storage service that allows you to keep your files and access those files from anywhere. It is a great backup solution for your WordPress blog. Dropbox offers 2GB of storage for free. You can get 16 GB of free storage by referring others.

If you need more space, you can upgrade to Dropbox Pro plan for $9.99/month or Dropbox Business plan for $15/month.

How to Backup WordPress Site to Dropbox

Luckily, there are plenty of WordPress plugins that allow you backup your website to Dropbox automatically. WordPress Backup to Dropbox is the best plugin to do that. It can perform an automatic backup of WordPress database (posts, comments etc) and WP-content folders (themes, plugins, images etc).

Here’s how to set up this plugin.

1. If you don’t have a Dropbox account, go sign up at Dropbox.com.

2. Now login to your WordPress Dashboard. Go to Plugins > Add New and search for ‘WordPress Backup to Dropbox’. Click on ‘Install Now’ button and activate the plugin.

3. Once you’ve activated the plugin, you’ll notice a new menu item named ‘WPB2D’ under your WordPress Dashboard. Hover the cursor over the WPB2D menu and click on ‘Backup Setting’.

4. Then it will ask you to authorize the plugin with your Dropbox account. Just click on the ‘Authorize’ button.

5. Then a new window will open and Dropbox will ask you to authenticate and grant the plugin access. Click on ‘Allow’ button.

Once WordPress Backup to Dropbox Plugin is connected to your Dropbox, it will automatically create backup folder named ‘wpb2d’ to store all backup files.

6. Now go back to ‘Backup Setting’ and configure setting according to your need.

• Store backup in a subfolder of the wpb2d app folder: If you are planning to back up multiple sites in the same Dropbox account, check this box and give a name to the subfolder.
• Day and Time: Set the day and time the backup to Dropbox is to be performed. If you are running a large WordPress blog, choose a day like weekend when you get less traffic.
• Frequency: Set how often the backup to Dropbox is to be performed. I personally prefer weekly backup. You can choose a daily backup as it only backs up the increments.
• Excluded Files and Directories: Select the files and directories that you wish to exclude from your backup. Normally you can exclude ‘wp-admin’ as you can obtain it from WordPress installation. You can also exclude cache folders. Most of the time, they named as wp-content/cache/, wp-content/tmp/, wp-content/w3tc/ etc.

The most important folder is ‘wp-content’ as it contains all your uploads, themes, plugins etc. You shouldn’t exclude it.

Click on ‘Save Changes’ and it will show you the Next backup schedule time.

Now it’s time to take your first backup. Just click on ‘Backup Monitor’ under ‘WPB2D’ menu. Then click on ‘Start Backup’.

It might take time (maybe several hours) depending on the size of your site.

Once the backup is completed, login to your Dropbox account and check the backup.

Other Dropbox Backup WordPress Plugins

WPB2D is my personal favorite. I’ve been using this plugin for a while. And it works great for me. However, there are a lot of other plugins that you can try to Backup your WordPress site.

1. BackWPup

BackWPup is free WordPress plugin that schedules complete automatic backup of your WordPress site to Dropbox and other cloud storage services like Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure etc. It creates a backup in .zip so that you can easily restore your WordPress site.

It has both free and premium version. The free version includes database backup, WordPress XML export, file backup, optimize and repair database etc.

2. BackupBuddy

BackupBuddy is one best WordPress backup plugins. It is created by iThemes. It’s a complete backup solution for your WordPRes site. It allows to backup your site to your own hard drive, Dropbox, Stash, Amazon S3, FTP, Rackspace and Email. You can easily connected it to your Dropbox account.

BackupBuddy is not free. Prices start at $80 per year for 2 sites, $100 per year for 10 sites, $150 per year for unlimited sites and $297 for lifetime access.

3. ManageWP

ManageWP is both a website and plugin to manage and backup your WordPress sites. It allows you to manage multiple WordPress sites from a single dashboard. It also allows you to schedule backup to cloud storage services like Dropbox, Amazon S3, Google Drive, and FTP / SFTP.

It has both free and premium service. For Dropbox backup, you have to buy the premium plan which will cost you $2.40/month.

4. UpdraftPlus

UpdraftPlus is another popular WordPress plugin for backup and restoration. It offers complete backup to S3, Dropbox, Google Drive, Rackspace, FTP, SFTP, email + others. The best thing about this plugin is Quick restore. You can restore your backups with a single click.

It has both free and premium version. For premium version, prices start at $70 for two sites, $95 for 10 sites and $145 for unlimited sites.

5. WordPress Backup & Clone Master

WordPress Backup & Clone Master is a premium plugin for backup, restoration, cloning, and migration. It creates full WordPress backups including database, settings, themes, plugins, and image. It will upload backups to your Dropbox account automatically.

This plugin will cost you $32. The price is perfect as it has so much features.

Wrapping Up

If you want peace of mind, take regular backup. Taking backup is must for every WordPress blog. When it comes to WordPress security, nothing can beat Backup.

Taking Dropbox approach makes things easier. You will have backups on both cloud storage and hard drive. By using Dropbox sync, you can save your files on your hard drive.

Now I’d love to hear from you. Which plugin do you use to backup your site? Do you use Dropbox storage? Let us know via comment.