Title: Preparing to Backup WordPress
Last modified: August 18, 2016

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# Preparing to Backup WordPress

 *  [Lorelle](https://wordpress.org/support/users/lorelle/)
 * (@lorelle)
 * [20 years, 9 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/preparing-to-backup-wordpress/)
 * In preparation for WordPress Backup Week, I needed to backup my site so I would
   know 1) how to do it, and 2) how to help others. And I learned a LOT!
 * First of all, the process of backing up WordPress is a two fold step. You need
   to backup your database and your site. The instructions at [WordPress Backups](http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Backups)
   will take you through both processes.
 * Second, the WordPress Backup Plugin by Skippy and Ringmaster is great. You can
   find it at [http://redalt.com/downloads/](http://redalt.com/downloads/)
 * It is very simple and easy to use and you can have the backups saved to the server
   for later retrieval, downloaded immediately, or emailed to you. WOW!
 * BUT, this is where the lessons come in. Pay close attention or you may repeat
   my mistakes.
 * I was very impressed with the plugin. It automatically chooses all of the default
   tables in the database created during the installation, and then optionally allows
   you to choose other tables in your database, usually created and used by various
   plugins you may be running on your site. I clicked them all to backup.
 * Two hours later, the backup was still running and I got really nervous.
 * What I didn’t know is that there is a ton of stuff in those tables that I don’t
   need to backup, but no one told me.
 * **Now you are being told!**
 * Comment spam and site statistics are stored in some of those tables. This is 
   information that collects until it’s deleted, by the plugin or by you, whichever
   comes first. My site statistics table was 32 megabytes in size! My posts and 
   core WordPress tables came to only 8 megabytes, so I was backing up months of
   statistics that I didn’t really need. If you aren’t running Spam Karma 2 or another
   comment spam plugin that doesn’t automatically deletes comment spam from your
   database, who knows how big that table could be.
 * It is actually easy to empty the tables before you back things up, if you need
   to. The article on [Emptying a Database Table](http://codex.wordpress.org/Emptying_a_Database_Table)
   in the Codex should be used with great care, but it can empty tables from your
   database if you need to clean them out.
 * And when backing up manually or with the Backup Plugin, be very careful with 
   what you choose to backup from those optional tables!
 * Part Two of the backup process is backing up your site’s files. After all, you
   worked really hard on that Theme, it’d be a shame to lose it or have to do all
   that work over again. Don’t forget about those useful plugins! And the images
   and graphics you painstakingly added to your photoblog, gallery, and posts. Those
   need saving and backing up, too.
 * Again, I was caught off guard by the sheer size of the junk that had collected.
 * Using the helpful information from [WordPress Housekeeping](http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Housekeeping)
   and [WordPress Site Maintenance](http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Site_Maintenance),
   I went though my Themes and Plugins folders and got rid of the files I no longer
   used.
 * There are a lot of plugins I’ve added over the months that were great ideas but
   just didn’t work out for me in the end. Yet they stayed there, gathering dust
   and eating up space on my server. Sure, not much, but when I’m backing up over
   the Internet, it adds to the bandwidth and time to download the backup.
 * I printed the list of plugins from my Admin Plugins List and using an FTP program,
   went though the folder with my plugins and deleted the ones I didn’t have activated.
   This cut the size of my Plugins folder by more than half.
 * I deleted Themes I didn’t use any more, cutting down the size of the theme folder
   by 75%. I test drove a lot of Themes before creating my own.
 * I went through and found a few other files, javascripts, and things left over
   from my old website design and got rid of those, too, leaving the bare essentials.
   I copied all that via FTP to a new folder on my computer and saved them to a 
   CD, safe, along with the database backup file.
 * I printed out the instructions for [restoring the database](http://codex.wordpress.org/Restoring_Your_Database_From_Backup)
   from the Codex and folded and taped them to my CD case for the backup. Just in
   case.
 * In the future, now that my site has been “pruned to size”, backups will be faster
   and easier.
 * Now, GO BACKUP!

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## Tags

 * [backups](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/backups/)
 * [database](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/database/)

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 0 replies
 * 1 participant
 * Last reply from: [Lorelle](https://wordpress.org/support/users/lorelle/)
 * Last activity: [20 years, 9 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/preparing-to-backup-wordpress/)
 * Status: not resolved

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