Nowadays, email services offer huge amounts of storage for free, far more than anyone should need. But now it has a use: to store backups. I’m a Gmail man myself, and I recommend them for a few reasons:
- Ever increasing amounts of storage.
- Advanced filters so your backups don’t clutter your inbox.
- Brilliant email service overall.
Any email account will do though, so lets just jump straight in.
Plugin: WP DB Backup
WP DB Backup is the premier database backup plugin for Wordpress. Simply install the plugin and then enter the email address you want the backups sent to.
Choose the backup frequency based on your blogs activity. I backup once per day, because I receive a moderate amount of comments. If you receive a greater number of comments throughout the day, or simply post more frequently, then increasing the backup frequency to twice per day is probably a good time.
Plugin: Wordpress Backups
Wordpress Backups isn’t a plugin I use these days because it doesn’t scale well for large blogs and I figure it’s best to just stick with tools that have continuity. But what it basically does is backup your blogs files (plugins, themes etc) and then send them via email just like the WP DB Backup plugin.
If you aren’t interested in paying for Amazon S3 then this is a suitable alternative, but just be mindful of the fact that it’ll probably stop working if your blog gets too large.
[...] setup the email backup system described previously but use a desktop mail program such as Mail.app for Mac or Outlook for Windows [...]