MrinTech » Tutorial

Backup & Restore WordPress Blog/Website using cPanel

Mrinmay Bhattacharjee — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 08:42:58 +0000

Creating regular backups of your WordPress Blog/Website is very essential as disaster may strike anytime. These disaster includes Phishing attacks, malware, SQL Injections etc.

Backups also comes very handy when you are moving your WordPress Blog/Website to some other Web Hosting Providing. Let’s check out in this post, how to Backup & Restore your whole WordPress Blog/Website using cPanel Full Backup feature?

Note: Although, there are many other ways to backup your Blog/Website, we still recommend you to use the cPanel Full Backup feature as it backups EVERYTHING like your Databases, A Record Settings, MX Entries for Google Apps Account etc. Also, restoring cPanel Full Backup is quite easy and fast as compared to other methods.

Backup your WordPress Blog/Website using cPanel

Follow these very simple steps in order to Backup your whole WordPress Blog/Website using Full cPanel Backup Feature:

1. Login (Secure Login) to your cPanel Account

2. Look for Backup Wizard Icon under Files. Click on it:

3. On the very next page, hit the Backup Hyperlink/Button:

4. Now on the next page, you need to create a Full Backup of your cPanel Account, instead of Partial Backup. Click on the Full Backup Hyperlink/Button and you will be redirected to the final step:

5. The final page will ask you the Backup Destination (Where you want to store the Backup?) and your Email Address. Select Home Directory from the Drop Down Menu and Enter your Email Address (if not already present by default):

Hit the Generate Backup Button and cPanel will start backing up your whole account. You will also get a Backup Confirmation Email, once the full backup has been completed. The completed backup file will be in .tar.gz format and will be present in your Home Directory. Either you can download your full cPanel backup to your Hard Drive OR you can Transfer it to a Remote Server

Restore your WordPress Blog/Website using generated cPanel Full Backup File

You can’t restore the generated Backup file (.tar.gz), until & unless you have full root access to the server. Full root access is generally provided to users who have VPS (Virtual Private Server) or Dedicated Server. If you are on shared hosting, than you need to ask your Web host to restore the backup and they will do this instantly.

If you are moving from one Web Host to another, just upload the Backup file to the Home Directory of your New cPanel Account and ask your Web host to restore the Backup for you.

Hope this short guide helps lots of people in backing up and restoring their WordPress Blog and Website easily!

Also See: Backup WordPress Blog to Dropbox

This Post: Backup & Restore WordPress Blog/Website using cPanel was originally made on MrinTech

Setup a Custom Domain/Sub Domain for Tumblr, Posterous etc.

Mrinmay Bhattacharjee — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 20:26:33 +0000

Both Tumblr and Posterous are the Best and FREE Blogging/Micro Blogging Platforms, where you can start your own Blog almost instantly. Apart from these two, there are dozens of other Websites which also allows you to create your own Free Blog.

When you start a blog on these websites, your Blog Address will be on a sub-domain E.g.: http://www.mrintech.tumblr.com/ and http://www.mrintech.posterous.com/ etc. – This looks very unprofessional, if you have a large reader base and are blogging on your niche seriously!

Serious Bloggers having a large reader base generally opts for a Domain Name, no matter which Blogging Platform they are using. In this Post lets check out How to Setup your Custom Domain Name/Sub Domain for sites like Tumblr, Posterous etc.?

Tumblr

Setting up Main Domain Name (http://www.example.com/ or http://example.com/) for Tumblr

When you want to Setup/Point your Main Domain Name i.e. http://www.example.com/ or http://example.com/ to Tumblr IP Address, you need to edit/change the A (Address) Record from your Domain Control Panel (See Example Screenshot below):

Check out THIS VIDEO TUTORIAL about Setting up an A (Address) Record for your Domain Name using Domain Control Panel. Also, get the IP Address for Tumblr (72.32.231.8) from here

Note: Although, Namecheap Control Panel and Posterous are used in the Video Tutorial, but the process of Setting Up/Changing A (Address) Record remains same, no matter which Domain Registrar/Blogging Platform you are using!

Setting up Sub-Domain (http://www.mrintech.example.com/ or http://mrintech.example.com/) for Tumblr

When you want to Setup/Point your Main Domain Name E.g. http://www.mrintech.example.com/ or http://mrintech.example.com/ to Tumblr IP Address, you need to follow these very simple steps:

1. Login to your Hosting cPanel Account and Look for Simple DNS Zone Editor Icon under Domains:

2. Click on the Simple DNS Zone Editor Icon and in the Next Page, select the Main Domain Name from the Drop Down Menu, whose Sub-Domain you want to Point/Setup for Tumblr IP Address.

3. As soon as you have selected the Main Domain Name, following entities will get displayed:

4. Now suppose you want to setup/point http://tumblr.mrintech.com/ to tumblr IP Address, then you will enter following information in:

Name Field: tumblr

Address Field: Tumblr IP Address

In the Name Field, make sure you ONLY enter the preferred name of your sub-domain i.e. tumblr, not full Sub-Domain Name i.e. http://tumblr.mrintech.com/ or http://www.tumblr.mrintech.com/ or tumblr.mrintech.com or www.tumblr.mrintech.com

5. Now hit the Add a Record Button and wait for your Sub-Domain to propagate – It may take upto 48 Hours for your Sub-Domain to get LIVE on the World Wide Web completely.

Posterous

Setting up Main Domain Name (http://www.example.com/ or http://example.com/) for Posterous

When you want to Setup/Point your Main Domain Name i.e. http://www.example.com/ or http://example.com/ to Posterous IP Address, you need to edit/change the A (Address) Record from your Domain Control Panel (See Screenshot with Posterous IP Address below):

Check out THIS VIDEO TUTORIAL about Setting up an A (Address) Record for your Domain Name using Domain Control Panel. Also, get the IP Address for Posterous (184.106.20.102) from here

Note: Although, Namecheap Control Panel is used in the Video Tutorial, but the process of Setting Up/Changing A (Address) Record remains same, no matter which Domain Registrar you are using!

Setting up Sub-Domain (http://www.mrintech.example.com/ or http://mrintech.example.com/) for Posterous

When you want to Setup/Point your Main Domain Name E.g. http://www.mrintech.example.com/ or http://mrintech.example.com/ to Posterous IP Address, you need to follow these very simple steps:

1. Login to your Hosting cPanel Account and Look for Simple DNS Zone Editor Icon under Domains:

2. Click on the Simple DNS Zone Editor Icon and in the Next Page, select the Main Domain Name from the Drop Down Menu, whose Sub-Domain you want to Point/Setup for Posterous IP Address.

3. As soon as you have selected the Main Domain Name, following entities will get displayed:

4. Now suppose you want to setup/point http://posterous.mrintech.com/ to Posterous IP Address, then you will enter following information in:

Name Field: posterous

Address Field: Posterous IP Address

In the Name Field, make sure you ONLY enter the preferred name of your sub-domain i.e. posterous, not full Sub-Domain Name i.e. http://posterous.mrintech.com/ or http://www.posterous.mrintech.com/ or posterous.mrintech.com or www.posterous.mrintech.com

5. Now hit the Add a Record Button and wait for your Sub-Domain to propagate – It may take upto 48 Hours for your Sub-Domain to get LIVE on the World Wide Web completely.

Similarly, most of the other Blogging Platforms allows you to Point your Main Domain Name/Sub Domain to their IP Addresses, so that you can easily get rid of their unprofessional and default sub-domain!!!

Before choosing any Blogging Platform, make sure you first gather information about its Custom Domain Name facility, as you may definitely require a Domain Name in future, in case your Blog goes viral!

Also See: Setup FREE Google Apps for your Blog

This Post: Setup a Custom Domain/Sub Domain for Tumblr, Posterous etc. was originally made on MrinTech

Backup all Emails from Gmail/Google Apps Account to Hard Drive

Mrinmay Bhattacharjee — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 20:59:49 +0000

Do you know you can easily backup every single Email from your Gmail/Googlemail/Google Apps Account to your Computer/PC Hard Disk Drive? This not only includes your Email Inbox, but every single Email from Sent Items, Emails stored under Specific Labels, Drafts, Attachments etc.

Some days back, 0.02% of all Gmail users found their Inbox completely Empty! This happened due to some software bug in various Data Centers of Google. Though Google Team was able to restore every single Email of affected users from their backup data kept offline. And, Now Everything is Running Absolutely Fine.

The above incident clearly shows, if you store important, personal and sensitive data in your Gmail/Google Apps Account, than backing up your whole data on your Computer/PC Hard Drive is highly recommended. If something like above incident occurs, than atleast you will have access to all your data.

Let’s check out in this Post, how to set up a Backup Service for your Gmail/Googlemail/Google Apps Account, so that every old Email as well as all new upcoming Emails, gets stored to your Computer/PC Hard Drive safely!

How to Backup each and every Email from your Gmail/Googlemail/Google Apps Account to your Computer/PC Hard Disk Drive?

For backing up all Emails from Gmail/Google Apps Account to Computer Hard Drive, we will make use of POP – Post Office Protocol. So, make sure POP is enabled for your Account:

POP is enabled by default for all Gmail Accounts. But, if you have disabled it, than you can enable it again from Forwarding and POP/IMAP Tab by going to Settings Page of your Gmail/Googlemail/Google Apps Account (See screenshot above). Here select Enable POP for all mail (even mail that’s already been downloaded) and click Save Changes button.

In case, you only want to backup NEW incoming Emails using POP, than select Enable POP for mail that arrives from now on – Enabling this option will disregard all old Emails from being downloaded on your Computer Hard Drive. Also, make sure that in the Drop Down menu, keep Gmail’s copy in the Inbox is selected. Now follow the below mentioned steps to set up a backup service:

1. First of all Download Thunderbird Mail Client for your Computer and Install it.

2. As soon as Thunderbird is installed >> Run the Program and Go to Tools >> Account Settings. Now look for Account Actions Drop Down Menu in the Bottom Left of Accounts Settings Windows, click on it and Select Add Mail Account…:

3. A New Windows of Mail Account Setup will open, which asks for Your Name, Email Address and Password:

Here enter your Exact Name, which you are using with the Gmail Account, in the Your Name field, your Complete Gmail Email Address (like: abc.xyz@gmail.com) in the Email Address field and Exact Gmail Account Password in the Password Field. Make sure, Remember Password is checked. Now, click Continue button.

4. If all the details you entered are correct after clicking the Continue button, Thunderbird will communicate with the Gmail Server and following information will be displayed, after some time:

Here select POP – Download all messages onto this computer, folders are local only, instead of IMAP. Without altering anything, click on Create Account Button. Wait, it’s not over yet!

5. Once you click on Create Account Button, Thunderbird will start downloading Emails (as per your preferred mail download settings) from the Gmail Server. During this process, go to Tools >> Account Settings again. Select Server Settings for the Gmail Account you just added:

Here, make sure the time for Check New Messages every is set in between 10 Minutes – 60 Minutes (this can be more as per your requirement). Also, Leave Messages on Server is checked and the 2 boxes just below it for For at most and Until I delete them are Unchecked.

Also, Uncheck Enable Adaptive Junk Mail Control for this Account under Junk Settings and make sure Don’t delete any messages is selected under Disk Space Settings (See screenshot above).

Click on OK Button and it’s all done.

Note: Here we are making Thunderbird ONLY to Backup your complete Gmail/Google Apps Account. We don’t require any features of Email Handing of Thunderbird here.

Thunderbird will start downloading Emails from your Gmail/Google Apps Account, which includes everything, from Google Server to your Computer Hard Drive. Thunderbird will also download all incoming New Emails as well as all New Drafts etc. to your Hard Drive. – You can say you have now synced your Gmail Account with your Computer Hard Drive.

Note:

The time for downloading your Complete Gmail Account depends on your Internet Connection Speed, Gmail Storage Space you are using and Gmail Server Settings, if any. If your account is too large in terms of Email Storage, than have patience.
Make sure, that the time for Check for new messages every is set greater than 10 minutes. If the frequency of Emails you are getting is very low, it’s suggested that you set the time atleast 60 Minutes or more. Setting time less than 10 minutes may result in a POP error, as Gmail Server will always rejects POP requests from Thunderbird – This is done to prevent overloading of Gmail Servers
Though chances are very rare, but POP may download Viruses/Spyware/Malware from your Gmail Account to your Hard Drive – This completely depends if any malware is residing in a particular Email as an attachment. Make sure, you are using Security Softwares like Avast, Avira, Kaspersky etc., which scans all incoming and outgoing Emails
In case, you require more help you can always browse Thunderbird Knowledge base and Gmail Help Page for POP

This Post: Backup all Emails from Gmail/Google Apps Account to Hard Drive was originally made on MrinTech

Automate WordPress Blog Backup to Dropbox using CRON Jobs

Mrinmay Bhattacharjee — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 14:47:34 +0000

Do you know that you can Automatically Backup your whole WordPress Blog (all Files as well as Database) to Dropbox by means of a WordPress Plugin and CRON?

Dropbox offers you Free 2 GB Online Space which you can use to backup various files/folders on your local PC. In order to automatically backup your WordPress Blog to Dropbox, first of all Create a Dropbox Account and follow very simple steps mentioned below:

Automatically Backup WordPress Blog using CRON Jobs

1. Install wp Time Machine Plugin to your existing WordPress Installation. As soon as the Plugin is installed and activated, it’s time to configure it. For configuration go to wp Time Machine configuration Page, Dashboard >> Settings >> wp Time Machine.

2. Now you will see following configuration page for wp Time Machine:

Here:

Choose Dropbox as the Current Offsite Service
Choose in between .zip and .tar.gz file format for your final backup to Dropbox – .zip file format will take more space as compared to .tar.gz file format
Keep Post Publish Event as Disabled, because this option will force WordPress to start wp Time Machine every time a publish or update event occurs. As a result the Post Publishing Time will get increased
Keep Time Stamped Sub-Directories option Enabled or Disabled as per your choice. This option will add date to your Backup Folder in Dropbox like wpTimeMachine-2010-04-15
Keep Cache Related Directories as Excluded – If you are using Cache Plugins like WP Super Cache or Hyper Cache, than this option will exclude Cache Files from being Backed up, as these temporary cache files will eat space in your Dropbox Account
Keep Logging as Enabled, as this will make it easier for you to get help with issues using this plugin. The log that’s created is located in your wp-content directory & contains helpful information that would be very useful if you face problems with this plugin
In the Email Address and Password Field, enter your Dropbox Email Address and Password. You can also make this plugin to save your Dropbox Account Password. Also specify the Path/Directory in your Dropbox Account where you want to save the Backup Files generated using this Plugin. But make sure, you create the directories first in Dropbox, as the plugin will not create directories by itself.

3. Now login to your cPanel Account and Look for CRON Jobs Icon, which is located under Advanced:

Click on it and the immediate next page will allow you to configure CRON Jobs.

4. Now Set your CRON Jobs Execution Frequency to 1 Day or 1 Week etc., as per your Backup Requirements. You can also select Minutes, Hours, Days and Months here as per your backup requirement:

In the Command Field, copy and paste the following line exactly (Just replace example.com with your Domain Name using WordPress and whose files you want to Backup to Dropbox):

curl “http://www.example.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-time-machine/cron.php?generate=1″

Now Click Add New CRON Job Button

Now the CRON Feature will automatically (as per your Day/Date/Time settings) make the wp Time Machine Plugin to backup and upload your WordPress Blog to Dropbox.

Backup WordPress Blog without using CRON Jobs

If you don’t want to Automate Blog Backup to Dropbox using CRON Jobs, than directly click Generate wp Time Machine Archive after entering your Dropbox Username and Password in the 2nd Step above:

You can ignore 3rd and 4th Steps above if you don’t want to automate the process by the plugin

The Final Output

The final backup files in your Dropbox Account generated by the plugin will be as follows:

All files and sub-folders of you blogs wp-content folder
MySQL Database
.htaccess file
Instructions for Recovery

Hope the above tutorials helps many bloggers in automating their WordPress Blog Backup Process

Also See: Transfer Files from Server to Server after DNS Propagation and Create a Backup of your Website Files on another Server

This Post: Automate WordPress Blog Backup to Dropbox using CRON Jobs was originally made on MrinTech

[Tips & Tricks] Useful WordPress Plugins and Third Party Apps

Mrinmay Bhattacharjee — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 12:49:16 +0000

WordPress is one of the best and free Content Management System in the market and with the use of some specific WordPress Plugins & Third Party Applications, you can squeeze/add more power/functionality to your Self Hosted WordPress Blog

In this post, we’ll check out some very useful, yet uncommon, WordPress Tips and Tricks which can be deployed by any WordPress User by means of certain WordPress Plugins and Third Party Applications.

1. Exclude particular Post/Page from appearing in WordPress Blog Homepage and RSS Feeds

Case may arise, when you want to exclude specific WordPress Post from appearing in your Blog’s Homepage as well as RSS Feeds. This can be easily achieved by means of Stealth Publish WordPress Plugin. The Plugin adds and assigns a value of 1 to custom field stealth-publish for a particular post, so that it doesn’t appear either in the FrontPage of the Blog as well as in the RSS Feeds. Once you have added Stealth Publish Plugin to your WordPress Installation, a small checkbox will appear in the Right Sidebar of Add New Post Page:

If it’s checked, then that particular post will never appear on the FrontPage of the Blog as well as in the RSS Feeds. In case, you have also included WordPress Pages in the RSS Feeds, using plugin like RSS Includes Pages or manual modification, than this plugin will override that function and the specific Page will not exist on FrontPage as well as in the RSS Feed of Blog

2. Add Hyper Link and get Free Backlink from RSS Feeds of your Blog

By using RSS Footer WordPress Plugin, you can easily add a line of content at the top or bottom of every post which appears in the RSS Feed of your Blog. This additional line of content can be a personalized message written for your Blog Readers or Hyper link(s) to your Original Article/Homepage/any other Webpage:

There are many websites bots which crawls and publishes posts from your Blog’s RSS Feeds on their own website. In this case, adding suitable Hyper link(s) in every post of RSS Feed will give you Free Backlinks coming from those Websites! On the Settings Page of RSS Footer in your WordPress Dashboard (Settings >> RSS Footer), just add any additional content line as per following format:

%%POSTLINK%% : A link to the post, with the title as anchor text
%%BLOGLINK%% : A link to your site, with your site’s name as anchor text
%%BLOGDESCLINK%% : A link to your site, with your site’s name and description as anchor text.

And the Plugin will insert those lines/links to all posts in the RSS Feed of your Blog. You can also customize the position of this Additional Message from the Plugin Settings Page. For example, following line of code in the Settings Page of RSS Footer:

This Post: %%POSTLINK%% was originally made on MrinTech

Resulted in following message in each and every post which appears in the RSS Feed of MrinTech:

* Note: If even after installing the Stealth Publish and RSS Footer plugin, your FeedBurner Feed (assuming your Blog uses FeedBurner for managing/delivering RSS Feeds) doesn’t show any changes, than you may want to Ping Feedburner for immediate update or ReSync FeedBurner, so that it clears the Feed Cache and start building the Blog feed again from scratch!

3. Optimize Images for WordPress Posts and Pages

Optimizing Images for your WordPress Blog Posts and Pages includes the following:

JPEG Compression
Removing Meta Data from Images, easpecially from JPEG Images
Removing Unused Colors from Images
Suitable conversion of certain GIF Files to PNG Files

Above optimization techniques not only reduces the file size of images, but also retains the quality of original image. Above optimization techniques are completely lossless, hence your resulting images will retain its original color and visual quality.

All the above optimization techniques have been integrated into a WordPress Plugin called WP Smush.it based on the concept of Yahoo! Smush.it. Just install the plugin and all images which you are going to upload after the plugin installation will be optimized using the above mentioned lossless optimization techniques.

Old images, which you uploaded before installing this plugin, can be optimized by clicking Smush.it Now link present just below every image in the Media Library (See Screen shot above)

4. Install WordPress on Windows/Linux/MAC OS X/Solaris based Computers for Offline Usage/Testing

WordPress can be easily installed on your Local Machine if it’s currently running Windows, Linux, MAC OS X and Solaris. The main advantage of installing WordPress on your computer is that, you can make use of it in Offline Mode or can carry on various Testing Processes like Theme Testing/Development, Plugin Testing/Editing etc. without altering the original files on your website server.

WordPress can be installed on your Local Machine either by using Microsoft WebMatrix or XAMPP. While Microsoft WebMatrix runs only on Windows Operating System, XAMPP works on Windows, Linux (SuSE, RedHat, Mandrake and Debian), MAC OS X and Solaris based computers

Apart from Core WordPress Installation Files, these platforms also includes Core Components for running WordPress like MySQL Database, PHP and other Operating System dependent components like Apache, MySQL, SQLite, Microsoft SQL Server, ASP.NET, .NET Framework etc.

You have to download all the required components for WordPress within Microsoft WebMatrix/XAMPP User Interface. Once downloaded and installed, you can start using WordPress in Offline Mode on your Local Computer instantly

5. WordPress Blog Security using CloudFlare’s Globally Distributed Network

You can enhance your WordPress Blog Security by yourself using Plugins like WP Security Scan, , but still it’s not sufficient for your Blog Security! As Attackers and Bad Bots are constantly developing New Methods of attacking WordPress Blogs

Than the only option left is to opt for Free Cloud Based Security provided by CloudFlare for your WordPress Self Hosted Blog. CloudFlare make use of data from Project Honey Pot, which is a Distributed SPAM Harvester Tracking Network, to make your WordPress Blog safer from Hackers/Attackers, Malicious IP Addresses and Bad Bots.

Not only CloudFlare offers Cloud Based Security to your WordPress Blogs, but it also acts like a Free Content Delivery Network (CDN) for your WordPress Blog. CloudFlare has got many Proxy Servers located at various parts of the world and your site will be very fast to visitors, as the visitor will see a cached copy of your Website from the nearest Proxy Server of CloudFlare in his/her Browser.

Anyone can make use of CloudFlare Services either by Changing Domain Name servers provided by CloudFlare after Signing Up OR simply by using CloudFlare WordPress Plugin

Limitations of CloudFlare

Currently CloudFlare is in Beta Stage and following are the limitations in case you are going to use it for your WordPress Blog:

CloudFlare may affect internal statistics programs which are dependent on Apache Logs – The positive site here is that, your Web Server will get less load due to very few requests directed towards Apache
CloudFlare delivers static Website content to your Visitors by means of its various proxy servers located around the World. Under this if you make any changes to your WordPress Blog, then the changes may take some time to get reflected in every part of the World
If CloudFlare detects any user using Malicious IP Address or with Infected Computer, he/she have to enter a CAPTCHA, powered by reCAPTCHA, before he/she is granted access to the Website

But No Doubt, CloudFlare is currently offering Top-Notch and Free Protection, if it’s used with any Website/WordPress Blog

Hope these tips helps a lot of WordPress Users around the World. Feel Free to share your own tips/views on this article in the Comments Section below.

This Post: [Tips & Tricks] Useful WordPress Plugins and Third Party Apps was originally made on MrinTech