backup

Simple shell script that genereates a tar.gz file with a complete backup of a Wordpress site (code, uploads, database)

Requirements

• php-cli: used to read the wp-config.php file and extract database credentials
• mysqldump: to generate database dump
• tar: used to archive everything in one file
• gzip: compress final archive
• $BACKUP_DIR: bash variable to specify where the backup should be put
• wp-config.php cannot contain ?> (which is actually recommended in this official php note)

Usage:

(export BACKUP_DIR=/path/to/backups; cd /var/www/example.com; bash /path/to/script/backup.sh)

This will backup the WordPress installation with the web root directory /var/www/example.com and will place the backup file in /path/to/backups.

Notes & todo:

• a sql directory will be created inside $BACKUP_DIR and removed completely afterwards regardless if existed before or not
• add a verbose mode to debug (even add a log into the final archive?)
• non-standard database port is not supported

Credits

This script was inspired by A Shell Script for a Complete WordPress Backup but modified heavily to work on OS X Sierra (special tar version) and to get the database password automatically from wp-config.php.