Data Backup Digest

WordPress is one of the most popular blogging platforms out there. The great thing about it is that it is very simple for anyone to start their own and publish their thoughts. If you run your own self hosted WordPress blog then you are likely to be mindful about the security of your blog. Not only do you want to keep away untoward visitors, but if your content goes missing for whatever reason then you’re going to want to get it back. This is where a service like VaultPress can come in.
VaultPress claims itself as being “the world’s best WordPress security, backup, and support”. But how true is this claim? This article will take a look at the service and see whether it is worth your money.
Running a personal blog is one thing, but if it starts making money or is your business then the need to protect it comes even greater. Some people’s day job is running their blog; such is the monetization they have on it. As such, protection is going to be extremely important. VaultPress comes from the company Automattic, the same who are behind WordPress. Chances are they are going to know their stuff when it comes to the blogging platform.
One of the glowing features of VaultPress is that it takes backups of your blog in real time. What this means is that every time something on your blog is changed or updated, be that a new post published or someone commenting, then your blog is sent to Automattic’s servers and backed up. Even if you change a single setting then it will make a backup. In addition to the Automattic grid, content is also backed up to two separate cloud services. In total there are 11 copies of your data, continuously backed up in realtime. This really is comprehensive cover.
Another great feature of VaultPress is that it also tracks changes that are made via FTP. For example, files uploaded via FTP would not be tracked by WordPress. VaultPress scans your website every evening to pick up on these changes and backs it up without issue.
Of course, a backup service would be fairly useless if it didn’t let you restore the data. With VaultPress it is simple: go to the calendar and select the date and time that you want to restore back to. That is all there is to it. If you don’t want to do a full backup then you can also retrieve individual files from the dashboard (like uploads or plugins) with one click.
VaultPress comes with a price tag of $15 per month. While there are plugins out there that backup your blog for free, none are quite as comprehensive as VaultPress. If you are just running a self-hosted blog for your personal use then you can probably get away with such a plugin. However, if this is a business then VaultPress is invaluable. That $15 a month can be seen as an investment to your security framework – consider the trade off and the losses you would incur if all your data vanished.