Automatic the makers of WordPress have just introduced a new backup service for self hosted WordPress sites called VaultPress.
This new service will provide automated backups of your content to their servers and allow you to make restores of your content in the case of catastrophic failure on your webserver.
VaultPress is now in Beta so you will be able to protect one of your sites but it is not free. For the basic level you pay $15 a month and premium is $40 a month. Since this is quite a bit more then most people pay for hosting the number of people making use of this service will probably be limited to commercial customers and larger blogs.
The service works by you installing a plugin in your site and then data from your site is backed up … most likely using the same filters you use to do imports from other wordpress installs.
Is this a great deal?
For most of us probably not. The cost is high like we mentioned above and people that manage their own sites either through WordPress or through cPanel or other webhosting software already have a way to make backups of their content for free.
If you have a little skill or are willing to put in the time learning you can also setup cron jobs to backup your database and files and email them to your gmail or other mail account.
On the other hand if you are a site that gets millions of visits a month it would not be a bad idea to test the service as a secondary fail-safe. On the other hand if you do have a large professional site you may have already looked at cloud computing services like Amazon’s or at the very least mirrored servers that can distribute load and provide constant uptime in case of hardware failure.
Anyway VaultPress is sure to be well supported because it is from the Makers of WordPress and if you think you may want to try it go sign up for the Beta.
