I know you understand that it’s important to backup your WordPress database but sometimes you say to yourself “Yeah, I will backup my WordPress database tomorrow”. But tomorrow never comes! Ask yourself, when was the last time you did the backup? 3 months ago?

Actually, it’s pretty easy to do a database backup in WordPress itself provided you are using one of the later versions of WordPress. It takes less than 3 minutes in my case since I have a fairly simple blog and not many posts.

The WordPress Database Backup plugin comes pre-installed in WordPress version 2 and above. You just need to activate it and use it. After you are done, it’s advisable to de-activate it for security reasons. Here’s a quick run through of the steps to make:

1. Login to your WP control panel.
2. Click on the Plugins tab.
3. Activate “WordPress Database Backup”.
4. Click on the Manage tab.
5. Click on the Backup sub-tab.
6. Choose the backup option that best suits you. I prefer to just download it to my computer.
7. Click on the Backup! button. (You should see a nice progress bar showing you the backup percentage as it progresses)
8. After you are done with the backup, repeat step 2 and 3 above only this time to de-activate the plugin.

Trust me, it’s never too early to do a backup. Without a proper backup, panic attack won’t help our penguin here. If you are more adventurous, you can check out this DB Manager plugin which promises more features, but I myself have not gotten to try it yet.