Backup Problems and FTP Nightmares

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10 years ago

Hi Everyone!

The intention of this blog is to hopefully help some of you out there that may be experiencing problems backing up your website and believe me, in being a newbie but relatively tech savvy I was scratching my head in frustration for days.

Firstly I tried three different backup plugins inside Wordpress but I was getting this endless loop of similar errors. Now if you have came across this post before following some of the other tutorials I suggest engaging in them first and carefully, to the letter!

The backup to Dropbox option was giving me errors on all plugins but you should try this first go to:

https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/training/backup-wordpress-to-dropbox-tutorial

and for errors go to:

https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/welshy/blog/backwpup-dropbox-not-working-have-you-checked

This method involves you to first open up a Dropbox the tutorials will take you through this and read the comments or ask welshy as he is pretty damn knowledgable if you have problems.

Now, I haven't resolved my backup plugins problems but will try again later an keep you informed, so I then decided I must try a method outside of the wordpress interface so opted for the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) method.

Again our best friend welsh has provided a useful tutorial on this too which would involve you downloading the free software Filezilla. Go to this address for download https://filezilla-project.org/download.php and the tutorial here https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/training/ftp-filezilla-connecting-to-domain-via-ftp

Now when on many of these tutorials you will probably see my comments of despair so here are a couple of additional things that I did to eventually get my FTP download to work and I use a Macbook Pro so you may have to adapt for Windows.

Go to Settings>Sharing>File Sharing and tick check box.
Click Options and tick Share files and Folders and make sure your user account is ticked also
Next go to Launchpad>Utility>Terminal
In the Terminal screen copy and paste these instructions: sudo -s launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ftp.plist then enter your user password to authenticate. To disable this function just replace the word load with unload.
The next task involve configuring your modem/router access this by using it's IP address. Not all settings are labelled the same for different models and manufacturers but what you're looking for is Port Forwarding, consult your manual or search the web for instructions.
In my modem I went to Advanced>Virtual Server>Port Forwarding then add new.
Your modem may have predefined applications so select Servers>FTP Server otherwise set up a user defined application and name it, say "my site FTP" then choose All for internet IP address and then in the forward to internal IP address enter your computers IP address (x's for my privacy) i.e. 19x.1xx.1.3 you will get this in the Utility folder under Network Utility.
Now in the table enter TCP as the protocol and enter 21 for the port in all fields.
Apply these settings and your modem may have to reboot so go and make a cuppa or a snack.
Now follow welshy's tutorial on Filezilla and viola we have a connection. Yay

Now I am unsure on what exactly you should download I think it may just be the wp-content folder inside the httpdocs folder but to be on the anal side I downloaded the whole httpdocs folder and it took some time so maybe just start chopping the veges for dinner or something and let it do it's stuff.

Happy FTPing Folks

Dave