Have you backed up your WordPress site lately?

Making a backup of your WordPress website or blog is akin to things like drinking 8 glasses of water per day or exercising more… we know we should do it, because it’s good for us, but, well, life happens, doesn’t it? Other things get in the way and we just somehow never get around to it.

The thing is, having an up-to-date backup of your site is vital. You put too much effort into your site content simply to see it disappear down the virtual drain along with your livelihood, if your website is an important part of your business. We’re not bringing this up to scare you into taking action. Fear can be a motivator, to be sure, but it pales in comparison to the motivation and benefits that come from peace of mind – there is great freedom in knowing that your backups are being taken care of without you having to lift a finger.

Introducing VaultPress

VaultPress is a new(ish) system for making backups of your WordPress site, brought to you by Automattic, the people behind WordPress itself. It’s what they use to keep the millions of free blogs on wordpress.com backed up and secure, and now they’re making it available to people with self-hosted WordPress blogs and websites.

Why use VaultPress?

Good question. There are various (free) backup plugins out there that you can use, or you can make manual backups of your site yourself (or hire some geeks to do it for you!)… so why use VaultPress instead?

Well, we’re glad you asked. Here’s why:

  • Because VaultPress makes real-time backups of your site: That’s right – every time you write a post, or someone leaves a comment on your site, it’s backed up immediately and automatically. That means your backup is always synchronised to your current live site, unlike other forms of making a backup where there’s always a discrepancy because you only make a backup once a day or once a week (or at even longer intervals in most cases!).
  • Because VaultPress keeps backups of your site going back to when you first sign up: If you need to roll back to a prior version of your site, you can.
  • Because VaultPress backs up your site ‘in the cloud’: Usually backups end up stored on a single server, which is fine until that single server decides to give up the ghost (in the machine). Bye bye backup. Not so with VaultPress – your backups are stored across multiple servers. In the event that one of them has a bad day, your site will still be absolutely fine.
  • Because VaultPress is especially designed for WordPress sites: VaultPress makes a full backup of your entire site – all the bits and bobs that are important to keep your WordPress site going. And if you have to restore from a backup, you know that you have the support of the WordPress team behind you if you need help.

Sounds great! How do I sign up?

VaultPress is currently invitation only, requiring you to apply for a Golden Ticket. That’s not necessarily as exclusive as it sounds; after all, they let us in ;)

As a result, you can apply directly to VaultPress. It will cost you $15 per month, at the current introductory price (likely to increase to $20 – $30 after the introductory period is over).

But wait… before you go…

We’re currently offering a special VaultPress backup and maintenance package. It will cost you a little more per month, but we think the benefits far outweigh the few extra dollars/pounds. For £25 per month (how much is that in US Dollars?), we’re offering you the following:

  • We’ll sign you up to VaultPress under our account, and install and configure the plugin for you: Apart from contacting us to sign up and clicking on the PayPal button in the invoice we send you, you won’t need to do anything else. We’ll take care of the VaultPress setup for you.
  • We’ll restore your site free of charge* in the event that it crashes: Emergencies always seem to happen just at that point when you’re least able to pay for them.
    *To help you ameliorate the cost, if something goes wrong and we need to restore your site from a backup, we will do so free of charge for the first two hours of fixing – for most site issues, this will be enough time; if the problem is a very complex one, we’ll give you a 50% discount on our hourly rates for the rest of the time involved in getting your site up and running.
  • We will update WordPress for you when required as well as update any plugins that need updating every month – free of charge: As part of this maintenance service, we will update your WordPress installation every time an update becomes available, plus we will perform any plugin updates that are necessary once a month – all at no cost to you.
  • A monthly contract: Your contract with us is on a monthly basis. You may cancel at any time, and we will stop the subscription. Please note that cancelling does, however, mean that we will remove the VaultPress plugin from your site, and that you will no longer be protected by it.

Like what you hear? Sign up here!

Ready to add your site to VaultPress and take advantage of our special offer? Please contact us to tell us that you’re interested, and we’ll get back to you to get all the necessary details like your site name and login information from you. We’ll also send you an invoice for the service, and as soon as that’s paid, we’ll get VaultPress up and running to protect your site.

Please note: There may be extra upfront costs involved if we have to update your WordPress installation to the latest version or do any further tech work on your site in order for us to be able to install VaultPress for you. We will invoice you separately for this, if applicable. If you’d like to check with us prior to signing up, please contact us with any questions you have.