WordPress MU

Hello,

On my standard WP sites I use a plugin called backup manager to perform backups. I'm relatively new to MU and was wondering how most people back up their sites? Best for me would be a single backup which would cover the main MU install and all of the associated blogs. Or would be better to back up the blogs individually (I only have a total of 5). Any thoughts or suggestions?

Back up the database in phpmyadmin, or do a mysql dump command-line.
Then, if you really want to snag the files too, everything in the blogs.dir directory, or possibly everything under wp-content.

For your mysql backups, you might want something like this: http://sourceforge.net/projects/automysqlbackup/

For your files, you can just put something like this together and set a crontab:

#!/bin/sh
tar -czf /home/backups/$(date +%Y%m%d)web-backup.tgz /home/web

where the paths are changed to suit your situation.

Thanks for the responses. That sounds more complex than what I have been doing in WP 2.3. Is there not not some sort of plugin which would capture the database and all important files in one shot?

Also, how hard would it be to restore the database in the event of a crash (using the above phpmyadmin method)?

Kurt

No, there's no mu-specific plugin that i know of. I do recall someone saying the regular WP one works in MU though. could always try it.

Restoring the db thru phpmyadmin is just as easy as exporting.

The only thing to remember is with five blogs, you get a db that is 5x the size of a stand-alone WP install. So at some point, phpmyadmin will crap out because it has a 16mb limit (or so) in there for imports & exports, although you can do it in batches when it gets that big.

Okay, I'll start testing phpadmin to see how I like it. I wonder if this plugin works in MU:

http://lesterchan.net/wordpress/readme/wp-dbmanager.html

It's the one I normally use in standard WP and it works really well. I guess I'll just have to try it. If I activate and run it for the main MU install, will it include all of my sub blogs, or do I have to activate and run it for each individual blog? I guess it is up to me to test it...

Kurt

We just do a complete and total backup via the webhoster's backend and upload it to a filesharing network. Sure, it'll be deleted in 90 days but that's long enough.

So that would be through cpanel or something equivalent? I've never done it that way, but that seems to make good sense. And the restoration is easy as well?

Yes, CPanel or whatever software you're using. That's more for the cases of "Your host hozes your install" that occasionally happens with some hosts.

If would rather just do something most day-to-day that doesn't involve throwing around huge files, you could probably get by by backing up just the databases. For uploaded files, we have a 'backup' subdirectory that sits outside of the public_html file and just copy over the entire blogs.dir subdirectory every morning and keep it for a couple of days. That way, in case a file gets deleted by accident, it should be right there for you.

"If I activate and run it for the main MU install, will it include all of my sub blogs, or do I have to activate and run it for each individual blog? I guess it is up to me to test it..."

Well, all blgos are in the same db, so it should grab them all. Do you have other users on your system? If so, they'll be able to access this plugin and run it as well.

Or, as mentioned above, if you have cpanel, there's a section in there to dowload backups. The database is the stuff with the entries though. ;)

What would be a nice plugin would be something that would make any changes to several databases at once, you you just export your current db and import it on a second server then setup mu to make changes to both. if you could combine that with something to allow you to put part of your db (say half) on one server the other half on another, you get st least 6 servers.

2 duplicate webservers that you make sure have the same plugins everything, setting it up for ns1 and ns2 to go to one server then if that doesn't work ns3 and ns4 to the other

then 4 database servers

Get all 6 in diffrent datacaenters that would make for one robust site that would be hard to come down.

doable: mysql replication, rsync, round robin dns (or even better a real hardware load balancer), openvpn between each sites ..

and hmm a bit of sleep.