Dave Caolo

They look great.

A few enterprising Drupal developers have built a convincing copy of 37signals’ project manager Basecamp, and they want to tell you how to do the same. It definitely looks and feels similar. We’ll see how long this lasts.

Tiddly Backpack lives on a USB flash drive and mimics 37Signals’ Backpack.

I manage 8 WordPress blogs. Creating timely backups for all of them is a pain. So, today I put an automatic solution in place that results in hands-free, off-site storage of weekly backups. Here’s how.

You’ll need a paid Backpack account (the free account does not offer file storage) and the WP-DB-Backup plugin. First, we’ll set up Backpack.

One of the cool features of Backpack is that each page has a unique email address. Anything sent to it gets posted to that page. We’re going to take advantage of that feature. First, create a new Backpack page with a name like “WP Databse Backups.” Note the email address in the page’s footer. That’s the address we’re after.

Now it’s time to install the WP-DB-Backup plugin. As usual, just drop it in /wp-content/plugins on your server. Next, activate it via the “Plugins” page of your WordPress control panel. After that, click “Manage” and then “Backup.”

There are several options for you to fiddle with. For our purposes, look at “Scheduled backup.” Select “Once Weekly” (or whatever schedule you like) and place the email address you got from the Backpack page in the field labeled “Email backup to.” Finally, click “Schedule backup” and you’re done.

There you have it! Automatic, off-site backups of your WordPress database. Since each backup has a unique name based on its creation date, you needn’t worry about overwriting anything. Have fun!