With every update for WordPress everyone who actually bothers to read the readme or howto sees the warning/instruction
Step 1: Backup Database Tables and Files including .htaccess
…
Use phpMyAdmin or other appropriate tools provided by your webhost, to backup the database used by WordPress.
Luckily the Wordpress codex points at phpMyAdmin for the database backup, because the Wordpress export feature is officially useless as a backup tool.
There are several backup plugins for WP, but most don’t serve the optimal purpose.
As blogger you should not only backup your database when you upgrade but you should regularly back your data up. But honestly, who visits regularly the options to backup the database.
I known many website owners, or bloggers, who’d love to know how to regularly backup the database in order to avoid losing all their posts every time they screw up their Cpanel config.
Luckily the mysql backup process can easily be automated with a cron job.
Since many bloggers have cPanel, here is a short howto automate your mysql database backup with a cron job in cPanel1.
- The syntax is the same for Plesk and other back ends [↩]
