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Backing up in WordPress

So I have been doing this blog for now 2 years, wow time flies, and I have been doing regular backups, and all of them manually.  So I open up my host’s cpanel and downloaded the database backups, then I would go to the each site’s wp-admin and created an xml file.  Sometimes I would also do a backup of the child-themes I’m using.  I have gotten quite fast at it even, probably 15 minutes max, if the connection is fast.

A few days back I started to think, there has to be a better way.  I saw several options, but were paid.  I really didn’t want to pay another $5/month for something that I could do for 15min every week; then I saw an article on wpbegginer.com – How to Create a Complete WordPress Backup for Free with BackWPup So today, I gave it a go  I tried it with the smallest installation I had, 10 minutes later I had configured and ran the backup.  I moved to the other sites, and I had it.  So try out BackWPup.

I backup the database, the child-theme & the xml export, every week to my Dropbox; just like I did before, but now I don’t spend 15 minutes everyweek, plus it always happens.  I just get an email telling me that it went through.  I wasted 26 hours doing this for the past 2 years, in 15 minutes I’m set for the future.

 

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Playing Catch up

Our family went to Guatemala in September, we spent about a month out there with our family, it was a great trip.  Now I’m trying to play catch up and preserve our adventure in our family blog.  It almost feels like a part-time job; editing pictures, laying the format and flow, and then writing the post.

Each post I try to limit to about 300 words, but it seems like I can’t put everything in such a limited word count.  For most I’m close to 1,000 words, and the last one was 1,200 words.  And it’s not that I sit down to write so much, is just that I want to convey the feeling and preserve the memories.

I’m very grateful that I have the medium to remember what we did and share it with others.  I still get excited about doing it, and I like it so it is not a burden, I just look back and I’m amazed.  I really hope that someone finds as much value to what I’m doing, but if not I am fine with just how rewarding it is to remember.

I started with the desire to write 15 posts of our adventures in Guatemala, it looks more that I’m going to write 11, and I just have 3 more posts to write; meanwhile I’m behind on the things we are doing, so it’s a catch up game.  Hopefully I’ll have some quiet time to finish, yeah right ::SIGH::