Dropbox was founded just over a decade ago, in 2007. Still, it has already become popular with many individuals, whether it’s the average citizen or business owners who need a central place to store their business security. In this article, I’ll show you a tutorial with a guide on how to backup and save your WordPress sites on a Dropbox cloud server, which means you don’t have to depend on your hosting company to do it for you.
We will go in this guide over a few plugins that allow you to backup your WordPress site and store it in the cloud, specifically in a Dropbox account. We’ll start by going over why you’d want to store your backups this way in the first place before diving into a few different free and premium plugins that handle backups in different ways.
How to Backup WordPress Dropbox
Fortunately, many WordPress plugins allow you to save and backup your site to Dropbox automatically. WordPress Backup to Dropbox is the best plugin to do that. It can perform an automatic backup of the WordPress database (posts, comments, etc.) and WP-content folders (themes, plugins, images, etc.)
Here is a tutorial on configuring this plugin to save and backup your WordPress site to Dropbox. So, if you don’t have a Dropbox account, sign up at Dropbox.com. Now login to WordPress Dashboard. Look for Plugins > Add New and search for ‘WordPress Backup to Dropbox.’ Click on the ‘Install Now’ button and activate the plugin.
Once you’ve activated the plugin, you’ll notice a new menu item named ‘WPB2D’ under your WordPress Dashboard. Go to the WPB2D menu and select ‘Backup Setting.’ Now it will ask you to authorize the plugin with your Dropbox account. Just click on the ‘Authorize’ button. Then a new window will open, and Dropbox will ask you to authenticate and grant the plugin access. Click on the ‘Allow’ button.
Once WordPress Backup to Dropbox Plugin is connected to your Dropbox, it will automatically create a backup folder named ‘wpb2d’ to store all backup files.
Your Needs
If you plan to backup multiple WordPress sites in the same Dropbox account, check this box and give a name to the subfolder. Set the day and time the backup to Dropbox will be performed. So, if you are running a large WordPress blog, choose a day like the weekend when you get less traffic.
Set how often the backup to Dropbox is to be performed. I 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 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 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 the ‘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.
More WordPress Backup Options for Dropbox
BackWPup: BackWPup is a free WordPress plugin that schedules 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 to restore your WordPress site easily. It has both free and premium versions. The free version includes database backup, WordPress XML export, file backup, optimization, and repair database.
ManageWP: ManageWP is a website and a 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. This plugin has free and premium services.
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 versions.
Final Words About Backup do WordPress para o Dropbox
Don’t just back up on the server level. In fact, WordPress recommends keeping three different backup copies — all in different mediums (CD, hard drive, desktop, cloud, etc.). For my most important sites, I maintain a recent database version locally (on my MAMP).
WordPress Backup to Dropbox is affordable and a great backup solution. To protect your website, you must ensure regular backups. These plugins we reviewed will come in handy and keep you ready. So, we hope we helped with our tutorial and guide on how to backup and save your WordPress sites to a Dropbox cloud service.
