How to enable automatic backup for WordPress multisite and single-site?

Background

If you are using Prime Mover PRO 2.0.0+, you can use the automatic backup feature to create backup snapshots of your site automatically. You don’t need to worry about logging in to your site to create backups manually.

As long as your site and hosting fully support WordPress CRON jobs and it’s fully working – the automatic backup feature will do all this work for you!

Take note that this is a PRO feature and requires a license to work. If you haven’t got one, it’s time to upgrade to a PRO plan.

Enabling Automatic Backup

To enable automatic backup is easy:

• Login to your site as administrator or super administrator (if multisite).
• If you are using a single-site, make sure the site has a PRO license activated.
• If you are using multisite, make sure all subsites that you want to have automatic backup enabled have PRO license activated as well.
• Go to Prime Mover PRO -> Settings -> Backup Management -> Automatic Backup.

• Make sure to check the “Automatic Backup” checkbox and save. This activates the automatic backup globally. But it won’t run yet because you still need to configure the auto backup settings for the site/sites.

• Click the “Scheduled backup” link after saving it or go to Prime Mover PRO -> Toolbox.
• [OPTIONAL] In multisite – to load the correct automatic backup settings, you should enter the blog ID of that subsite.

• In the Toolbox – please configure each of the minimum required settings for auto backup to work, namely:
  • Backup options – e.g. full backup, database + media only, or database-only backup.
  • Backup schedule – defaults show the most common schedules but you can also set custom schedules if necessary.
  • Automatic backup (checkbox on multisite only) – this allows network administrators to turn on and off the automatic backup on a per-subsite basis.

• Once all required settings are saved – verify that the backup is now queued for running by going to Prime Mover PRO -> Event Viewer. As long as the backup task appears here – it means you have configured the task correctly.

• Check that two backup CRON tasks appear for every configured site in the Event Viewer. The first task is the main auto-backup event that depends on your backup schedule. The second task is the progress event which is meant for checking/continuing pending automatic backup processes. This depends on your backup retry timeout options for that site – currently, this defaults to 50 seconds. This means that automatic backup processes can run up to 50 seconds on each session before it exits and tries again. This control ensures that all PHP processes are within your server timeout (most hosting is set to 60 seconds or even more). If your host kills PHP processes running more than 30 seconds (this is rare though). Then you need to lower the retry timeout settings to 20 seconds. This will ensure that backup processes on each session are not killed by your host but will continue to run until completion.

• [OPTIONAL] For best performance, set the Retry Timeout Options as high as possible but within your hosting timeout. This depends on your hosting server timeout (please check with your hosting tech support). By default – this is set to 50 seconds which is best for shared hosting with a timeout of 120 seconds (common in popular hosts like Hostinger). Don’t exceed your retry timeout setting with your hosting timeout otherwise your auto-backup process can hang without noticeable error in the logs. This is because hosts will kill these running processes silently. If you are not sure about your host timeout setting – set this to default (50 seconds) or even 20 seconds to be sure.

• [OPTIONAL] Also for best performance – go to Prime Mover PRO -> Advanced -> Debugging Tools -> Turbo mode. Check “Enable turbo mode.” This speeds up automatic backup creation significantly – however please check if this is supported by hosts as well. Please refer to this dedicated guide regarding this setting.

• [OPTIONAL] Backup redundancy is usually the best practice. You can optionally configure to upload your backups to cloud services such as Google Drive and Dropbox. Simply check the Backup to Google Drive or Backup to Dropbox once you have done the configuration of these cloud services to work with the Prime Mover plugin. Once checked – automatic backup creates a clone copy of the finished backup and saves it to the cloud. The original backup copy is still saved within your server. These redundant copies are helpful in case you need it.

• That’s it. Done. If you are using multisite – you will need to enable and configure each subsite for automatic backups to work (via Prime Mover PRO -> Toolbox and enter the blog ID to load the specific subsite settings). You can monitor everything on the Event Viewer (including its progress or queued backups for all sites where you have enabled auto-backups).

Ensuring your auto-backup schedule will run

WordPress cron fires whenever a page is visited on your site. If you have a low-traffic site, your automatic backup tasks won’t fire as often as those of a high-traffic site.

To ensure your schedules will run (regardless of your site traffic) – you can use an external cron service which is free to use. If you are configuring automatic backup with multisite – make sure to set the cron URL correctly via the external cron service.

You can also use your hosting cron feature to enable it which is easy to use and convenient as well.

Important Notes

• Take note if you disable/deactivate the Prime Mover PRO license for a site with automatic backup enabled – it can no longer run. For automatic backup to continue running – a valid license must be active at all times.

• If your PRO license expires – then the automatic backup configured for that site will no longer run as well. So make sure to renew before your license expires or much better – make sure automatic renewal is enabled inside your Freemius account.

• Prime Mover PRO does not delete old backups automatically. So you will need to take a look at your site from time to time and decide what backups to delete manually (to manage your hosting disk space allocation). This matter is best decided by the site owner/administrator. It is because what backups to retain or delete does not depend on the age of the backup but on its usefulness and relevance to your site functionality.

Need technical assistance?

If you have issues with automatic / scheduled backups – please get in touch with our technical support.