Automatically Backup Your WordPress Sites to a FTP Server

Last updated: July 6, 2026

This brief tutorial is going to show you how to create a bash script that will automatically backup your WordPress site and database to a FTP server at a specific time and date.

If you own a personal blog or website and you want to make sure that your blog can be restored in the event something terrible happens, then you’ll want to setup a backup and restore process. Using some WordPress plugins might get the job done, but I haven’t seen a complete plugin for WordPress that will backup your blog’s database and content via FTP automatically. I have tried many out there and they just couldn’t do it correctly.

So, I searched online and came upon this bash script that works. I modified it a bit for it to work in most environment, and all you need to do is add your FTP Server, Password, and the blog directory you wish to backup.

?Stuck at this step? Ask us, it is free and include the exact error.

Objectives:

• Backup WordPress Sites to a FTP Server Automatically
• Enjoy!

To get started, create a new file called backup.sh   in your /root directory. Then copy and pastes the content below into the file and save.

Replace the highlighted lines with information of your systems.

#!/bin/bash


# Copyright 2008, 2010 Guy Rutenberg <http://www.guyrutenberg.com/contact-me>

# WordPress FTP backup 2.0

#

# Easily backup wordpress instances via ftp.

#

# Change Log:

# ===========

# 2.0:

#  - Auto-detect database settings.

#  - Exclude cache data from backups.

BACKUP_DIR=/var/www/html/wordpress   
FTP_HOST=ftp_hostname
FTP_USER=ftp_username
FTP_PASS=ftp_user password
FTP_BACKUP_DIR=/var/www/html/wordpress
# end of configuration - you probably don't need to touch anything bellow


PROG=`basename "$0"`

print_usage () {

    echo "USAGE: ${PROG} [options] BLOG_ROOT"

    echo "Backup a WordPress blog"

}


print_help ()  {

    print_usage

    cat << EOF


Options:

    -h, --help          show this help message and exit


EOF

}


TEMP=`getopt -o h --long help -n "$PROG" -- "$@"`

if (($?)); then

    print_usage

    exit 1

fi


eval set -- "$TEMP"


while true ; do

    case "$1" in

        -h|--help) print_help; exit ;;

        --) shift; break;;

    esac

done


if [ -z "$1" ]

then

 print_usage > /dev/stderr

 exit 1

fi


BLOG_DIR=$1

DB_NAME=`echo "<?php require_once(\"${BLOG_DIR}/wp-config.php\"); echo DB_NAME;" | php`

DB_USER=`echo "<?php require_once(\"${BLOG_DIR}/wp-config.php\"); echo DB_USER;" | php`

DB_PASS=`echo "<?php require_once(\"${BLOG_DIR}/wp-config.php\"); echo DB_PASSWORD;" | php`

DB_HOST=`echo "<?php require_once(\"${BLOG_DIR}/wp-config.php\"); echo DB_HOST;" | php`


BLOG_DIR=`dirname "$BLOG_DIR"`/`basename "$BLOG_DIR"`

BACKUP_DIR=`dirname "$BACKUP_DIR"`/`basename "$BACKUP_DIR"`


echo -n "dumping database... "

DUMP_NAME=${DB_NAME}-$(date +%Y%m%d).sql.bz2

mysqldump --user=${DB_USER} --password=${DB_PASS} --host=${DB_HOST} \

 --databases ${DB_NAME} \

 | bzip2 -c > ${BACKUP_DIR}/${DUMP_NAME}

if [ "$?" -ne "0" ]; then

        echo "failed!"

        exit 1

fi

echo "done"


echo -n "Creating tarball... "

TAR_NAME=${BLOG_DIR##*/}-$(date +%Y%m%d).tar.bz2

tar -cjf ${BACKUP_DIR}/${BLOG_DIR##*/}-$(date +%Y%m%d).tar.bz2 --exclude cache ${BLOG_DIR}

if [ "$?" -ne "0" ]; then

        echo "failed!"

        exit 2

fi

echo "done"


echo -n "Uploading SQL dump and tarball to FTP... "

ftp -nv <<EOF

open "${FTP_HOST}"

user "${FTP_USER}" "${FTP_PASS}"

put "${BACKUP_DIR}/${DUMP_NAME}"

put "${BACKUP_DIR}/${TAR_NAME}"


quit

EOF


rm -f "${BACKUP_DIR}/${DUMP_NAME}"

rm -f "${BACKUP_DIR}/${TAR_NAME}"


if [ "$?" -ne "0" ]; then

        echo "failed!"

        exit 3

fi

echo "done"


 
After saving the file, run this command:
chmod +x backup.sh
You must run the above command as root. 
 
After that run the commands to instantly backup your site.
/root/backup.sh /var/www/html/wordpress/
 
To schedule it to run every Sunday, open crontab and add the line below
0       3       *       *       7      /root/backup.sh /var/www/html/wordpress >/dev/null 2>&1

 
To learn more about how to schedule tasks via cron, read this post.
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