how to test wordpress backup

[think2]

I have a friend with a wordpress website (maya theme/ woocommerce) on bluehost who doesn't know anything about web development. A while ago he clicked an "update" button and broke his website - which was because he had updated a plugin without updating the main theme. As a result, he signed up to bluehost pro backup which now makes regular backups for him, stored on bluehost servers.

Any idea of what is a good way to test that the backups work so that if he updates plugins and it goes wrong, he can have confidence in the backup working.

Is it possible to create a copy of the website on a sub-domain on his bluehost account? I read somewhere there could be problems with both sites accessing the same database.

 

[ringtail]

Try the BlueHost help desk. I have an account there and have found them a-m-a-z-i-n-g-l-y responsive.

I *think* there is not a problem letting 2 sites access a common database.

Side note: I'm having a tough time figuring out how to control WordPress. Even though it let's you import a custom CSS to overwrite some of the default features, all in all it's really difficult to get the WordPress display customized, unless you take it the way they serve it. It reminds me of the APPLE Computer world in the sense that THEY instead of YOU will decide everything.

 

[smakme7757]

This is how i keep my blog backed up.
1. Take an export of your wordpress configuration and include all data
2. Take an export of your database (Through PHPMyAdmin or what ever management tool you have access to)
3. Take an export of any plugin configurations you would like to keep.
4. Take a backup of all files and folders associated with your Wordpress site.

Keep this data somewhere safe and clearly marked. For example Backup-Blog-10-12-2012

A: If you break a plugin you just reinstall the old version
B: If you break your site you can either roll back to the last backup or try to replace whatever was damaged
C: If you loose comments or anything database related you can just import the parts you need.

There might even be plugins available to make the job easier with regards to the database, but 1,3 and 4 should be easy enough. However a database backup is pretty essential.

If you are only allowed 1 database instance i wouldn't test a restore in a sub folder on the primary server.

What I would do is setup an XAMPP server on Windows. http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-windows. Then test a restore in there. You could even create a VM with XAMPP if you don't want it on your own machine.

 

[turgenjev1]

If you are moving a site to different domain or subdomain, you will experience problems. Here is a tutorial that explains what steps need to be taken in order to restore your backup on different location:

http://www.craniumstorm.com/how-to-move-a-wordpress-site/

 

[Davidjohn]

If you want to test the wordpress backup then you must install new wordpress and import the database in wordpress.You can install Updratplus from wordpress plugin page and updraftplus backups must be chosen from the sub-menu in settings. Through this you can configure your backup routine.