Most WordPress plugins are free but BackupBuddy is a premium plugin. For an annual fee of US $150 I can use it to back up an unlimited number of clients’ website, which makes it great value. I simply wouldn’t have time to backup a couple of dozen sites manually every week.

Once installed on your website, BackupBuddy checks that the hosting server’s settings are conducive to doing a backup, and if there are problems, gives you advice on how to resolve them. In practice, I’ve found that only about one in four hosting packages needs tweaking in some way.

The plugin also runs a check for malware – handy, because if your site has been hacked you can revert to a previous backup.

Unlike some backup plugins, it can backup everything: your MySQL database, WordPress core files, theme, uploaded images and documents. And it saves it as a single compressed file.

You can set up a schedule – I tend to do weekly backups but the can be daily, fortnightly or monthly – and BackupBuddy will automatically do the backup and send you an email to tell you it’s ready. Then you can login to WordPress and download the backup. Even better, you can have the backup sent to your Dropbox account, or sent by FTP to another location for safe keeping.

All in all, it’s a great plugin and a reliable solution to keeping your website safe and secure.

Please note that WordPress may work slightly differently from shown in the video, if your website has additional plugins or has been customised. And WordPress gets upgraded and improved regularly. But most things should still look pretty much same!

The WordPress dashboard

Let’s start with an introduction to the WordPress dashboard, the first thing you see when you login to WordPress.

Writing and publishing a page

How to write a page – pages are a basic, everyday use of WordPress.

Writing and publishing a post

How to write a post – a post is like a news item, content that’s ordered by date and can be categorised.

Excerpts & the More tag

How to give your posts an excerpt – a short bit of text that sums up what the post is about.

Saving and returning to draft posts & pages

How to edit existing posts and pages – saving drafts of your content.

For more video tutorials visit WordPress.tv’s How To section.