CHAPTER 18 MAINTAINING YOUR BLOG 493 Take (Web domain)
CHAPTER 18 MAINTAINING YOUR BLOG 493 Take notice of the security warning contained in the documentation for Skippy.net s WordPress database backup plug-in and don t store your backups on the server for any length of time. This is because the backup files contain sensitive information about your blog. Don t let them be seen by unscrupulous people. Keep your backup files not only safe, but secure. Using the WP-Cron Plug-In for Regular Unattended Backups Recall the core directives of a good backup strategy: backups must be easy to do, rely as little on human interaction as possible, and be performed regularly. The WP-DB Backup plug-in certainly makes backups easy. Now I m going to introduce to you another useful plug-in from the same author that will take care of the other two backup strategy requirements. This next plug-in is WP-Cron, which takes its name from the UNIX command that executes jobs at a specific time and or date, either once or at regular intervals. You can download WP-Cron from Skippy.net s web site at http://www.skippy.net/blog/category/wordpress/ plugins/wp-cron/. By itself, the WP-Cron plug-in doesn t do much, but when combined with WP-DB Backup, it enables unattended backups of your WordPress database. Tip WordPress Codex strongly recommends blog administrators to back up their databases at regular intervals and before upgrades. You should take this advice! Unattended how does that work? The WP-Cron plug-in doesn t install anything on the web server, or configure a cron job that the underlying operating system (such as Linux or Windows Server 2003) runs. In fact, a lot of hosting providers wouldn t allow you to do that. Instead, this plug-in relies entirely on someone or something visiting your site, which is a fairly safe bet these days, with the number of search engine crawlers, TrackBacks, and Pingbacks interoperating with your site however unpopular it may be! Any time a page on your site is requested, it triggers the plug-in. If a preconfigured interval has elapsed, the task will be executed. In this case, at approximately the same time every day, an unattended backup will be generated and e-mailed to you. Download the WP-Cron plug-in from Skippy.net s web site at http://www.skippy.net/ blog/category/wordpress/plugins/wp-cron/. By now, you know how to install a WordPress plug-in: unpack the zipped file to your local drive, upload the single file wp-cron.php to the wp-content/plugins folder, and then go to the Plugins page and activate the WP-Cron plug-in. You now need to configure unattended backups, because they re not enabled by default. Thankfully, this is no more complex than specifying an e-mail address for your backup archive file delivery. Return to the Manage page and again choose the tab labeled Backup. Scroll down the page, and you ll notice an extra section at the foot of the page, as shown in Figure 18-3. As with the attended backup (the one requiring you to click the Backup! button), you can also archive non-WordPress database tables that are present in the same database. To configure unattended backups, select the Daily check box, enter your chosen archiving e-mail address, and click the Submit button.
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