Bin-BlogRemote Database Backup WordPress Plugin
By Binny V A • Oct 13th, 2008 • Category: Blogging, Database, MySQL, PHP, Scripts, WordPress
I have released my second WordPress Plugin – Remote Database Backup. Its is based on the WordPress Database Backup plugin. If you are a regular wordpress user, you might be better off using WordPress Database Backup plugin instead of my version. But if you, like me, have a local server on your system and has a copy of your site on the local server as well as the online server, you will find great use for my plugin.
My plugin is designed to make it possible to remotely create and download wordpress database backup in form of SQL dumps. You can then use these dumps to sync the local version of your site with the online version.
Backuping your WordPress Database
- Install Remote Database Backup Plugin in WordPress
- Login to WordPress site
- Go to the Backup Page(Manage > DB Backup)
- Create a backup
- Download the backup file to your system
Sync With Local Server
And if you have a local version of your site, you can sync it with the online site using the backup file. Just follow these steps…
- Extract the backup file(its in the tar.gz format)
- Import it into your mysql database.
- Make some changes to the database(like set the home url) so that wordpress works locally
Automation Script
You can do all these steps manually – or you can use the automation script I have cooked up. You need PHP installed in your system for this to work(I assume you already have PHP if you have a local version of wordpress).
To use the script, first install the plugin. Then download the script and rename it to ‘backup.php’(the extension must be ‘php’ instead of ‘txt’. Now open it in your favorite editor and change the variables to match your site. You can run it by opening a terminal/command prompt and navigating to that folder and executing the command ‘php backup.php’. This will automatically make a backup and sync it with your local database.
Need Feedback
Let me know how it works for you if you are installing the plugin – its the first release – so I need some feedback.
Follow me(@binnyva) on Twitter
Very nice script, thanks. It had a little error, I had to change line 36 to:
$backup = load($site_url.’/wp-admin/edit.php?page=remote-database-backup/backup.php&exclude-spam[]=wp_comments&action=Backup’, array(’method’=>’get’,'return_info’=>true, ‘curl_handle’=>$result['curl_handle'])); //Create a backup of the core tables
and, it took me a minute to figure out that it resets your admin password to “admin”
and, you have to manually create the folder “Dumps” in the directory where the script resides
but, other than those things, I love it! really helpful tool!
Thanks for the feedback. I have created a new version of the plugin. There was a lot of confusion between ‘db’ vs ‘database’ – now its fixed at ‘database’ – so your script should work with the newer version as well.
I’ll add a note about the ‘admin’ password changing. And I’ll update the script to create the Dumps folder. Soon.
Once again, thanks.
I have a local version of my site too. So this tool will be very helpful.
Thanks Binny.
Binny…I am also a plugin developer and I like your idea – platinum seo and broken links remover…Now hwhat happens to the existing data in i try to sync up again.does it delete them and recreate the data in the local setup?
I have a suggestion for this plugin – can you implement incremental backups.so every time i try to do a backup only the incremental stuff gets backed up.and run a script to merge all the incremental versions into one on the desktop.That will be a killer plugin , i think.
@Rajesh
> what happens to the existing data
Its deleted – and the new data is inserted in its place.
> Incremental Backups.
Its a good idea – I’ll think about this. Maybe in one of the future releases, I’ll add this option.
Thanks for your feedback. Btw, I have used Platinum SEO plugin – good job on that.
Me again. I’m still using your script and have a couple small recommendations, that might save someone else the 30 minutes i just spent
1) line 24 of the script says:
$result = load($site_url.”/wp-login.php?log=$username&pwd=” . urlencode($password) .”&wp-submit=Log In&testcookie=1″, array(’method’=>’post’,'return_info’=>true, ‘curl_handle’=>false));
with a space between “Log” and “In”. That worked on one of my servers, but another choked, I had to change the space to “%20″ to get it to work, like so:
$result = load($site_url.”/wp-login.php?log=$username&pwd=” . urlencode($password) .”&wp-submit=Log%20In&testcookie=1″, array(’method’=>’post’,'return_info’=>true, ‘curl_handle’=>false));
2) if you have set an non-standard table prefix for your wordpress database, it goes moo. you might want to figure out a way to grab the prefix if possible, or at least put this in your instructions.
great work! thanks!
[...] Remote Database Backup WordPress Plugin [...]
does the Remote Database Backup plug-in work in WP 2.7? I installed it & can’t find it in the admin area.
Thanks!
aah – i see it’s under the posts menu in the sidebar! thanks for creating this.
This is a very easy to use plug in.
And because I know 1000 reasons to back-up I love it
I installed the plug-in and the automated script but when I run it from the dos prompt it saids php command not recognized? Also, I dropped the backup.php file into my root dir for wordpress and tried to run it from their and it saids curl not installed. I download curl and run it and still no go. Please advise. I’d really love to get this to work. I’m running 32bit WinXP on a PC.
Follow the instructions on this page about curl installation in Windows…
http://php.net/manual/en/curl.installation.php
Now I feel like I’m missing something really small. I got rid of all the errors. I’m running the backup.php file through firefox in my root directory and I get this message:
“Logging into WordPress … done. Creating a backup … Download file not found – exiting… ”
I’m in Tools/ Backup and peform the backup but it’s not finding the file. Do I need to set this somewhere in the backup.php file?
I assume you have installed and enabled the plugin. After that, you don’t need to create the backup manually – the backup.php will do it every time you run it.
If its not working, create a folder called ‘Debug’ in the same folder you have backup.php in. The next time you run the command, it will save a copy of the downloaded html file in that folder. You can take a look at that to see if login is done correctly. Let me know how it goes.
Yep. I have the “Debug” folder at the root of the installation. backup.php is not suppose to be inside of debug, right? Also, in the debug folder the tool has already created login.html and backup.html.
Can you send me those two files thru email. I need those to debug the problem. My address is binnyva, gmail.
It seems very interesting
I tried this on my site and got the message that
“Logging into WordPress … Curl not installed – this script needs curl to work. ”
Kindly suggest, what do I need to do to this script work
You have to install a curl extension for PHP in your system. Follow the instructions on this page about curl installation in Windows…
http://php.net/manual/en/curl.installation.php
Could I use the same script to backup my database if I have another mySQL server?
I’m not sure if I know what you mean. Can you be a bit more specific?
Hey great plugin! Im new to this and way over my head I think!!
Backups are my lifeline!!
So i’ve managed to get everything working and im using your Automation Script…
AND I get the done done done message, I also get the two backup (.sql.gz) files one in the /wp-content/backup-87e33/ on my live site and the other into the root folder of my “local” site…
BUT what dosn’t seem to happen is the sync….
I should also mention im not using this to sync localy but to a subdomain of the live site (which I plan on being my staging sever for my live site)
Hope this all makes sense! and i hope you can help solve why it isn’t updating my staging server database