Data Backup Digest

Running a WordPress blog can be a lot of fun for people to do in their spare time, but for some it will turn into a source and revenue and become a business. Companies may also use the content publishing platform for their own blogs or websites. As such, it is vitally important that all the data that is stored on a WordPress blog is secure. Say, for example, your website host has an outage and loses all your data. That is an extreme example, but you get the picture. You need to make sure that all your content is safe and being regularly backed up.
One such program that can help is WP-Monitor. This is a free and paid for plugin that comes with a variety of features – much more than just backing up your data. This article is going to take a look at the tool and see if it is up to scratch.
The first, most important, feature of WP-Monitor is that it takes a daily backup of all your WordPress files and the database each day. They store the backups using Amazon S3 secure storage to help keep your data safe.
WP-Monitor uses four different price plans and the one you pick will probably depend on how much data you have. You can use it free for a maximum daily backup size of 1GB. $49 a month will give you 2GB, $99 a month gives you 7GB and $149 a month gives you 15GB. You can upgrade your plan at any time, so if the amount of storage you need increases then it isn’t an issue.
Of course, backing up is no good if you can’t restore from it. If you accidentally delete something on your site or need to restore everything then you can do so up to two times a month. This feature isn’t possible if you are using a free account. The fact that there are only a limited number of times you can restore per month is a bit cheeky, especially since it doesn’t increase on the paid price plans. However, hopefully you won’t need to back up too often anyway.
Other features include a broken link reporter, which will email you when it detects a broken link on your site (one which points to a page that no longer exists) and advise you on how to fix it. WP-Monitor will also email you a series of traffic reports, detailing the visits to your website, and email you if your traffic decreases or increases by 10% (this amount can be changed). These email notifications can be disabled if you don’t want them.
Finally, WP-Monitor will also automatically install updates to plugins and themes when a new release is available. All updates will only be carried out after a successful backup and when it is checked that the update is compatible with your current version of WordPress. If the updated changes affect your website negatively then you can restore your website to its previous state free of charge.
Although some people may be put off paying for a plugin to back up their files, you have to consider whether you’d rather risk forking out the costs associated with data loss or simply pay a monthly fee and have that security. If it’s the latter, WP-Monitor is a solid choice.