VaultPress
- VaultPress is an automated backup, stored in an offsite digital vault in real-time.
- VaultPress is available for every site on VIP and runs hourly backups of a site’s SQL database.
- The database backups generated by VaultPress are provided for use in a local development environment.
- VaultPress backup files can be imported to local development environments, but cannot be imported directly to a VIP environment because of the format and content of the backups as detailed below.
Content of a VaultPress backup
- Only
wp_
-prefixed tables are included in VaultPress backups. - On a multisite environment, subsites are backed up individually by VaultPress. WordPress database tables that are shared by the entire multisite can be accessed in the VaultPress backups for subsite ID
1
. - VaultPress backups do not contain the files associated with the media library. A copy of your media library can be requested in a VIP support ticket.
Accessing VaultPress backups
With a VaultPress user account, VaultPress backups can be accessed from a site’s WordPress Admin dashboard, by selecting VaultPress under the Jetpack menu.
A VaultPress user can be added by submitting a request to VIP Support and including the following information:
- The username or email address associated with the user’s WordPress.com account.
- The Site Address (URL) of the VIP site for which they would like to access backups.
A user can create a WordPress.com account without having to create a blog or site by visiting: https://wordpress.com/start/account
Importing VaultPress backups for local development
Once downloaded, VaultPress backup files can be imported into a local development environment using the WP-CLI command wp db import <path-to-file>
.
Jetpack option values are stored in a site’s database and will exist in a VaultPress backup. To prevent these values from creating Jetpack conflicts with the production site, either
- Add
define( 'JETPACK_DEV_DEBUG', true );
to the local environment’swp-config.php
to put Jetpack into offline development mode. - Run the WP-CLI command
wp option delete jetpack_options
to delete the options on the local database after import.
Disabling VaultPress
To disable VaultPress on a given environment, the VIP_VAULTPRESS_SKIP_LOAD
constant can be defined in a repository’s vip-config.php
file to disable VaultPress and prevent it from loading:
define( 'VIP_VAULTPRESS_SKIP_LOAD', true );
VIP database backups
In addition to VaultPress, the VIP platform stores database backups in a separate process. The VIP backups are taken hourly for production sites and daily for non-production sites, regardless of whether VaultPress is enabled.