In this series of ‘how to’ blogs, we take a deep dive into the more technical aspects of our platform and how to use them.
In this post we will show you how to backup a WordPress site to an S3 objectspace.
The problem
In many cases you don’t want to use all your website hosting space to store backups of your WordPress site.
The solution
Using S3 as the storage location for your WordPress backups is a good and safe solution.
Note
This solution can be used on any WordPress VM that is deployed in our cloud. You can get S3 storage with one of our VCO partners which are listed on the site. It is possible to backup multiple WordPress sites to S3 by using multiple buckets or folders.
Install the Updraftplus plugin
First of all you need to download the Updraftplus plugin. As this is a basic WordPress routine, we assume you are familiar with this.
Configure S3 objectspace
To be able to use the S3 objectspace storage you need to create it first. We explained how to approach this in this previous blogpost. It is important to note that you currently need a domain and DNS to be able to access S3. In the near future we are releasing an update which does not rely on these settings anymore. We will keep you posted on this topic!
Configure the S3 options in Updraftplus
To be able to use our S3 objectspace you need to set a few settings first.
In the remote storage section it is important to select S3-Compatible (Generic).
Next you need to configure all specific S3 parameters. We’ve provided some examples in the screenshot below.
S3 access key
This key can be found when your S3 objectspace is created. In a previous blogpost this was explained in detail.
S3 secret
This secret key can be found in your S3 objectspace settings.
S3 location
This is a little trickier. Overall this is the bucketname previously created and optionally it’s the name of a folder where you want to store the backup. If you run several WordPress websites you can choose to use one bucket with multiple folders.
S3 end-point
This is the domain/subdomain which was created in DNS to point to the bucket. In the near future we are releasing an update which does not rely on these settings anymore. We will keep you posted on this update.
Bucket access style
We use the Path style for our S3.
To see if it all works you need to click Test S3 settings and a modular window will display. If the result shows succes the settings are done. If failed please doublecheck all parameters.
Click Save Changes to save all settings.
Run a backup
You can run backups manually or scheduled. In the below screen you can see if a backup is scheduled and how to start a manual backup.
Click Backup Now and the manual backup will run.
The Updraftplus plugin has lots of settings and we invite you to explore all options yourself.
For support for the plugin please contact the guys at Updraftplus, they will be happy to help.
