This page title is, ..

[ Howtoo: making a WP backup, without a Plugin ]

Yes, .. it can very easily be done: just set some Preachers out in the sun on Highway 61, ..

(Allah ka-hack-bar!)

Don’t be frightened to praise the name of God, no religious organization owns her: nor the woman’s voluminous skirts of protection.

** Rider, before we proceed any further here, please ensure that you have a current Plugin enabled backup to hand of your cherished website.

Your safety-net backflip will be your ultimate fall back in case of a mindless-fat-finger-click deletion error occurs, that can and do happen with more frequency than hertz.

This tutorial initially deals with making a backing up your website, but the resulting files: could also be used to transfer your entire website to another host. Yes! – There are WP Plugins (out there), that allegedly to do it all for you, but they also fail much more than they succeed: just check out the one star reviews, — where I then rest my case for taking the manual approach.

Going on below the the most Great and Bountiful Orm’s voluminous skirts, is a detailed breakdown of the PHP files and directories required to make a manual backup for migration, and of course, not forgetting the MySQL database tables that you’ll also need to pull it of.

This tutorial is initially being embarked upon, to simply familiarise yourself with how the WordPress environment actually works under god’s most voluminous bonnet, but it can be also used to impose your domination over WP as well.

My version of religious events, will also cover:-

• Local to New Site.
• The normal Old Site to New Site transfer.
  • It will also include a discussion on the merits of overwriting an Old Site with the New Sites contents.

Also: I won’t be using the cPanel either, and just making do with the plain old life saving FTP program, which is something that always runs, even if you’re facing the dreaded white screen of WP death, with it’s very helpful message saying:

“There has been a critical error on this website.
Learn more about troubleshooting WordPress.“, which is not very helpful at all in the grand scheme of things, and can happily come about if you just even forget to put a ‘;’ at the end of a simple command: which can be a bitch to find if you’ve just finished an hours worth of editing across a dozen PHP files.
(Talking from bitter experience here, spit!)

** I’m using the trusty old FTP as a basis of this tutorial, even if it does take some time to download your wp-content folder, but I gotta say to that criticism! – Then so what? – At least you’ll know for a fact that you’ve got a copy of your website, safe and sound on your own local computer. It’s something that you can’t say with any confidence in respects of some of these so called migration tools.

Note, for comparison: my own personal wp-content folder on b92.co.uk is 198MB, and it took just 9 minutes to download the lot (which included the images as well from the media directory), and during that critical downtime on your part, not by your website I might mention, – it didn’t care.

No, during this personal downtime: I was personally going through my outstanding emails, (I still haven’t finished them btw), but at least I now have a fully functional working backup of my website files to hand.

Running moan, .. there are soooo many bloomin useless articles on the web, about doing this manual backup; with an eye to transferring your site, then I have to say that (all) of them posture greatly on the exclusive use of whatever control panel is installed, and even I couldn’t miss the man moans of the very many many offerings, (with all of them manly men secretly promoting one web-host provider over another.)

The end result of this flagrant superior mansplaining, is making the tutorials really hard understand; with you subtly being sold one god given platform over another.

** My intense tutorial, will not go down that intense preachers promotional highway. Here, we will only discuss the directory layout: that’s found in every damned bog standard WordPress installation, all located out there under the blazing sun of sales commission and ignorance.

A WordPress Argument, .. [ Read more ]

Also keep in mind before you start, that you must have your FTP path to your website: your FTP username, and also your FTP password, these were given to you when you initially signed up for your current hosting provider.

For part two, you will also need to login to your hosting providers control panel, so that path: user name and password is also required.

** WordPress.org users are excluded from this tutorial, and my advice to you poor trapped souls, is to change your hosting provider as soon as possible, and at least find a provider who gives you the tools to work out of the gilded box.

So, without further ado, we will continue on with the manual backup (transfer) tutorial.

Part One, .. involves opening your FTP program, and then going to the /public_html/wp-content directory on your website. From here, download the entire folder to you own computer in a directory of your own choice.

** I personally suggest that it’s off of your C-Drive, in a directory that you’ve previously created called {Vault/My Website Content, but remember: you can call it what you want.

Allow the program to run, (it will take time.)

Note: any popups that say, do you want to over-write x-y-z files, just select (yes) if file date is newer, but why the FTP download is over-writing a brand new file to your PC, is a constant mystery to me, but never-the-less: it happens.

Once your download is complete, you now have a complete backup of all of your websites HTML PHP CSS and JS files: which are the system files for WordPress itself.

Here ends the first part of your manual backup with an eye to migration.

Part Two, .. the next section is slightly more complex: in that we need the actual MySQL database tables, where the (actual) content of your site is stored.

** Content being your (actual) Posts and Pages found on your own WordPress installation: with the links to your images, (actually) being held inside the individual Posts and Pages themselves.

Here’s the rub, all WordPress installations, (at a hosting level), all come with an online application called phpAdmin.

** Warning, this thing can really kill you website quicker than a stray bullet through the brain, especially with the mindless-fat-finger-clicks of [ deletion ] that can and do happen in mega hertz of frustration, and it’s this hurtful reason alone: that you really should have a normal Plugin backup to hand.

The backflip can literally save your life, by (literally) putting a bullet proof helmet on. Mind you, wearing it on your arse, might not stop it getting kicked.

Note to self — To Be Continued Later:-

Thanks for reading, Jessica: Praise be the ORI.