When you are financially dependent on your Internet business, it becomes most important to secure the data and keep backup on the safest place. When I started this blog 2 years back, I was used to generate not more than $10 per month. This number increased every month and now I make my living out of this blog. As the blog is using WordPress platform, I used to have plugins to take backup of the database and uploaded images. From start, I was using WordPress DB backup plugin which sends zipped version of Database to an email ID. After writing 500+ articles, I started using Automatic WordPress Backup plugin as well which uploads the images, database, plguins, themes on Amazon S3 bucket. Both were doing great job in taking backups but then the data and number of images keeps increaing daya by day and so was the revenue. Even if I am using VPS web hosting to host my WordPress blog, AWB used to reach the CPU limit while sending backup data on S3 account. Then I came to know about VaultPress, a premium backup service by Automattic, the same company which is behind WordPress.
What is VaultPress and how it is different from others?
VaultPress is a secured backup system launched by Automattic to take backup of self hosted WordPress blogs. Unlike Amazon S3 backup or DB backup, it used to take backup of your blog in real time. That means, the newly posted comment or posts on your blog is also backed up on Automattic’s secured server in real time. VaultPress keeps different versions of full backup of your blog taken at an interval of 1 hour. Unlike other backup systems, you can choose to download the backup of either plugins, themes, uploads or database. Or you can also download all of them at once by selecting all.
[ad id=’9′ style=’float:left;margin:10px 10px 10px 0′]Apart from secured and organized backup, VaultPress is also having capability to scan your WordPress setup for security. That means, if your blog’s theme, installed plugins or database is having any potential threat or hackable code, VaultPress will notify you about the same. This security feature comes with premium package which cost $25 more than the basic backup package ($15 per month). This feature is essential for those who use to install unverified plugins and themes from third party websites i.e. other than the official WordPress plugin / themes directory.
My experience of VaultPress Installation and First backup
After getting approval from my developer about VaultPress, I went ahead and requested a golden ticket. I would like to let you know that currently VaultPress is available on request and they use to approve and send golden ticket links manually to not more than 60 users per day. But I would also like to mention the prompt support available on Twitter by VaultPress team. After initiating my golden ticket request, I asked VaultPress team on Twitter to take a look on my ticket and let me know the status. It worked perfectly, and I got instant reply to check my Inbox. Twitter communication rocked, and I got VaultPress signup link in my Inbox.
So finally I was having an approved golden ticket. Now its time to start using the same.
Once I click on the golden ticket link sent through email, It asked to sign in with WordPress.com user ID and password. Once logged in, browser started downloading a plugin named “VaultPress”. I was suppose to install the plugin on my WordPress site. The installation was similar to any other plugin installation on WordPress setup.
VaultPress plugin installed and activated. That’s it, now it started taking backup of my blog and I can see the status on my WordPress Dashboard. The VaultPress settings page is showing current status where it started with uploads (images stored in upload folder). After that, it took backup of plugins, themes and database.
As VaulPress takes real-time backup of WordPress data, whenever your blog will receive comment or new post or changes in uploaded images, it will take that in backup. It synchronizes the stored files and folders of WordPress as well, that means whenever you delete a file (stored in WordPress folders) from server, that change will synchronize with VaultPress and the new backup will have that change as well.
Is there any need of other backup plugins if using VaultPress?
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As I told earlier, I was using Automatic WordPress Backup and DB backup plugins before installing VaultPress. Now my data is securely stored on VaultPress from where I can download the recent version or older ones at any point of time. So there is no need to have other plugins for same purpose and I can reduce the load on my server by removing them. In my opinion, there is no need to have other plugins for similar purpose if you are using VaultPress.
$15/month, Isn’t it too much?
I monetize my blog and make living out of it. In my opinion, one should keep investing in business to make that better. I would not mind $15 per month for taking a secured backup of my original work. Because if I miss any important post of mine, that would cost me much more than $15. Apart from good web hosting, a decent backup system is also very essential for professional sites. So take this $15 per month as an investment to make your business or passion more stable and secured.
Added advantage of VaultPress
Do you know the day of week on which you published most of your posts? Do you know the time time when you are most active on your blog? Stats tab on VaultPress dashboard will answer these questions for you. You can see the day of week and time when your blog received most comments and when you published maximum number of posts.
Note: For FTP changes i.e. Files deleted or uploaded through FTP, VaultPress runs a batch process in evening and synchronize the backup data after that for those changes.