To all the WordPress bloggers out there that got hit by the worm: You should backup regularly, and here’s how: You can easily backup your WordPress blog with a simple Automator (sorry Windows users) workflow.
What you will need
The workflow
The workflow to back up your blog is pretty simple. Once it’s setup, all you need is to run it.
- Ensure you have the OttoMate actions installed in your /Users/<username>/Library/Automator
- Create a new Automator Workflow.
- Add a variable called “Blog Export URL”, and set its value to http://<mywordpressblogdomain>/wp-admin/export.php
- Add a “Get Value of Variable” action to the workflow, and select the “Blog Export URL” variable.
- Add a “New Safari Documents” action. That will open a new Safari window pointing to the “Blog Export URL”
- Add an OttoMate “Click Link or Button in Current Page” action
- Select “HTML button” and “text” in the drop down widgets.
- Type “Download Export File” in the text field. Note: If your WordPress installation is in another language, enter the appropriate text for that button.
- Add a “Pause” action, to allow Safari enough time to download the blog XML file.
- Add a “Find Finder Items” action to find the wordpress XML file in the Downloads folder.
- Select the folder where downloads go (by the default they go into the “Downloads” folder).
- Set the file filter. In my case, I wanted files that start with “wordpress” and end with “.xml”
- Finally, add a “Move Finder Items” action to copy the files selected by the previous action, to their destination location (“/Users/<username>/Documents/…/blog backups” in my case).
- Run the workflow, and watch it back up your blog.
Notes:
- WordPress export does not export media. Keep a copy of the media you push to your blogs.
- You should program Automator to run your wordpress backup action periodically (say every day, or twice a day).
- You still need to close the safari window after the backup, since there doesn’t seem to be an action to do that. If you know one, please comment.
