The future of WordPress backups
By: Amrit Anandh
Tags: WordPress, Incremental, Backup

Introducing…

WP Time Capsule. 🎺🎶

The power of Incremental Backups

Traditional backup solutions back up all files and the database of your website over and over again for each backup. This is an extremely inefficient use of server memory and disk space. To illustrate better how bad this is, if the backup of your website is 500MB in size, ~15GB is used up if you backup daily and want an archive of 30 days even if there are no changes at all.

Traditional Backups take up a lot of disk space even when there are no changes to your website

The process of zipping all files and database puts a strain on server resources and can slow down your website. The success of these backups largely depends on the size of your website. Larger the website, lower the success rate. 😟

With incremental backups, only the files and db entries that have changed are backed up instead of backing up the whole site every time. Even if a day’s worth of change amounts to 10MB, a 30-day archive will take only an extra 300MB, instead of the traditional 15GB.

Incremental Backups take up far less space since only the changes are backed up

That’s quite a lot of space freed up for more of those awesome high-res photos for your blog. And since there is no compressing or zipping involved, it’s very light on your server memory as well. The size of your website is immaterial because the unchanged parts of your site remain untouched. Oh yea!

Auto-backup, for the win

If the simple task of backing up your website needs a developer or a consultant from an agency, you are doing it wrong. Our auto-backup ensures that all changes in your website are automatically backed up as they happen, in real-time with no human intervention. 🤖

This means that if your website is damaged now, that meaningful comment that was posted in your blog just a minute ago is available to be restored in a click of a button.

Your files in your own Cloud

With WP Time Capsule, your backups are saved in cloud storage apps that you already use.

Let me elaborate on the factors that convinced us to take this route.

Privacy Would you trust a third party provider with your / your client’s websites? Or would you prefer to store the backups in your favorite cloud storage app? Your cloud app, of course. They have very strong privacy policies regarding how they handle your files and you already use them to store your personal files, photos and videos.

Cost of Storage With the pricing wars waging between Dropbox, Google Drive and Amazon S3, we can only see the cost of file storage moving closer to Free every day. For instance, Google Drive starts you off with 15 GB of free storage which is more than enough for most websites and 100GB for $1.99. Amazon S3 has a more flexible, usage-based pricing of $0.03 (3 cents) per GB.

Off-site backups Another reason to use a cloud app is having off-site backups. We have noticed many people storing their site backups in the same server as the WordPress site. This is not advisable because there is a very real possibility of the server crashing or the site becoming inaccessible. And when that happens, you might lose access to the backup files right when you need them to restore your site.

File versioning A major perk with using these cloud apps is that all of them have a built-in, time-tested file versioning system. We have leveraged this instead of developing it from scratch. This means that you get the most reliable file versioning systems made by man and we get less development and maintenance overhead. Smart, aren’t we? 😛

Prohibitive pricing of Incremental Backup solutions

The cost involved in detecting changes, maintaining repositories for files, versioning them and selectively restoring them are not on the lower side. Hence, incremental backups have been affordable only by an elite crowd and out of reach of the common man.

Until now.

Not having to maintain a repository for your files and not having to deal with file versioning means lesser running costs for us. We are transferring these savings to you in the form of a more affordable, real-time backup solution.

We’re pretty stoked about getting WPTC into your hands as soon as possible. It doesn’t matter if you are new to WordPress or a hardcore WordPress veteran. A truly hassle-free and completely automated backup solution is what we prescribe for a good night’s sleep.

Sign up to get Early Access. https://wptimecapsule.com/