How to Backup Sites That are Using WordOps

WordOps is a great way to manage WordPress or any site using NGINX. All of my client sites are managed using WordOps and it’s one of the best tools to manage servers.

Backups are a huge part of managing servers and it’s always good to have multiple ways of restoring a site/server.

In this guide, you will create a script that will run to backup a specified site using WordOps.

When you’re finished, you’ll have a compressed file of the root directory excluding the WordPress install files and a gz of the database.

Prerequisites

Before you begin this guide you’ll need the following:

WordOps running
A non-root user with sudo privileges

Step 1 — Create the Backup Script

First create a directory to store the script such as /scripts.

mkdir /scripts

Next, create wo-backup.sh using nano or your preferred editor.

nano /scripts/wo-backup.sh

Paste the following:

#! /bin/bash

# Example usage: /scripts/wo-backup.sh yourdomain.com

SITE=$1
DATEFORM=$(date -d "today" +"%Y%m%d%H%M")
BACKUPPATH="/tmp/backups/$DATEFORM"
SITESBASE="/var/www/$SITE/htdocs"

if test -z "$SITE"; then
	echo "ERROR: no domain informed!"
	exit 1
fi

if [ ! -e "/var/www/$SITE/wp-config.php" ]; then
	echo "ERROR: $SITE does not appear to be a valid WordPress!"
	exit 1
fi

# Make sure the backup folder exists
mkdir -p "$BACKUPPATH"

cd "$SITESBASE" || exit

echo "Backing up files to $BACKUPPATH..."
tar -czf "$BACKUPPATH/$DATEFORM-$SITE.tar.gz" --exclude-from="/scripts/exclusions.txt" -C "$SITESBASE" .

# Backup WordPress config file
cp "/var/www/$SITE/wp-config.php" "$BACKUPPATH"

echo "Backing up WordPress database..."

wp db export "$BACKUPPATH/$DATEFORM-$SITE".sql 
	--single-transaction 
	--quick 
	--lock-tables=false 
	--allow-root 
	--skip-themes 
	--skip-plugins

gzip <"$BACKUPPATH/$DATEFORM-$SITE".sql >"$BACKUPPATH/$DATEFORM-$SITE".sql.gz
rm "$BACKUPPATH/$DATEFORM-$SITE".sql

exit 0

Ctrl+O Return then Ctrl+X to save.

Next, give it execution permission:

sudo chmod +x /scripts/wo-backup.sh

Finally, create a text file to exclude any files or directories that’s aren’t needed in the backup.

nano /scripts/exclusions.txt

Paste the following:

wp-admin
wp-includes
wp-content/index.php
wp-content/upgrade
wp-content/cache
wp-content/*.zip
wp-content/*.gz
wp-content/plugins/index.php
wp-content/themes/index.php
index.php
license.txt
readme.html
wp-activate.php
wp-blog-header.php
wp-comments-post.php
wp-config-sample.php
wp-cron.php
wp-links-opml.php
wp-load.php
wp-login.php
wp-mail.php
wp-settings.php
wp-signup.php
wp-trackback.php
xmlrpc.php

Now everything should be ready to backup one of your sites.

Step 2 — Use the Backup Script

To use the backup script, run the following:

/scripts/wo-backup.sh yourdomain.com
Backing up files to /tmp/backups/yourdomain.com...
Backing up WordPress database...
Success: Exported to '/tmp/backups/yourdomain.com/202205061919-yourdomain.com.sql'.

Here’s what’s happening when running this script:

Checks if there’s a WordPress site installed
Creates a backup path in /var/www/yourdomain.com/backup/
Backs up files excluding files listed in exclusions.txt
Backs up wp-config.php
Backs up the database

Conclusion

After the backup, you should be left with 3 files.

Site files compressed as a tar.gz
Database compressed as a gz
wp-config.php

You can then copy these files using SFTP or rsync to keep as a backup.

Update

Updated the script to backup files into your sites WO directory instead of a tmp directory (example: /var/www/yourdomain.com/backup/.

I’ve pushed all this code up to this repository if it’s easier.