I’m not a shell script expert, but here’s what I could put together quite easily after looking around a little on the net. This is a script that will automate the backup process. What it does is display a multiple choices menu with your websites folders. Once you select one, it gzips the folder, makes a bzipped backup of the corresponding database, and moves those two archives to a backup folder at the root level of your server.

The code

#!/bin/bash

# Define Backup folder
BACKUP_DIR = /home/user/backups

# backupDB() : Make a dump of the database and bzip it.
backupDB (){
    echo -e "nStarting database backup of ${SITE}"
    mysqldump --user=${DB_USER} --password=${DB_PASS} --host=${DB_HOST} ${DB_NAME}
    | bzip2 -c > ${BACKUP_DIR}/${SITE}_sql_$(date +%m%d%y).sql.bz2
    if [ "$?" -ne "0" ]; then
	    echo -e "nError while doing database backup of ${SITE} !"
	    exit 1
    fi
    echo -e "-> Backup of ${SITE} database successful !"
}

# backupFiles() : gzip the files, add the date and move them to a backup folder
backupFiles (){
    echo -e "nStarting files backup of ${SITE}"
    tar czf ${BACKUP_DIR}/${SITE}_www_$(date +%m%d%y).tar.gz ${SITE_DIR}
    if [ "$?" -ne "0" ]; then
	    echo -e "nError while doing files backup of ${SITE} !"
    	exit 1
    fi
    echo -e "-> Backup of ${SITE} files successful !"
    echo -e "nWould you like to backup another website ?"
    select RESTART in "yes" "no" ; do
        if [ -z "${RESTART}" ]; then
            echo -e "Please enter a number."
        else
            # yes
            if [ "${RESTART}" = "yes" ]; then
                    backupInit
            fi
            # no
            if [ "${RESTART}" = "no" ]; then
                    reset
                    exit
            fi
            break
        fi
        echo
    done
}

# backupTnit() : main function, display the menu and lauch backups
backupInit (){
    reset
    printf "¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤n"
    printf "¤       Automatic Backup        ¤n"
    printf "¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤n"
    printf "nWhich folder would you like to backup ?n"
    select SITE in "mywebsite" "myblog" "myforum" "quit" ; do
    if [ -z "${SITE}" ]; then
        printf " Enter a number."
    else

        # My Website
        if [ "${SITE}" = "mywebsite" ]; then
            SITE_DIR=/home/user/www/${SITE}
            DB_NAME=mywebsitedbname
            DB_USER=mywebsitedbuser
            DB_PASS=mywebsitedbpass
            DB_HOST=mywebsitedbhost
            backupDB
            backupFiles
        fi

        # My Blog
        if [ "${SITE}" = "myblog" ]; then
            SITE_DIR=/home/user/www/${SITE}
            DB_NAME=myblogdbname
            DB_USER=myblogdbuser
            DB_PASS=myblogdbpass
            DB_HOST=myblogdbhost
            backupDB
            backupFiles
        fi

        # My Forum
        if [ "${SITE}" = "myforum" ]; then
            SITE_DIR=/home/user/www/${SITE}
            DB_NAME=myforumdbname
            DB_USER=myforumdbuser
            DB_PASS=myforumdbpass
            DB_HOST=myforumdbhost
            backupDB
            backupFiles
        fi

        # Quit
        if [ "${SITE}" = "quit" ]; then
            reset
            exit
        fi

        break
    fi
    echo
    done
}

backupInit

How to use

First you have to create the backups folder, for example /home/user/backups. Your websites would be in /home/user/www

Then open the script in your favorite editor and adapt it to your folders structure. Define the path to the backup folder you just created:

# Define Backup folder
BACKUP_DIR = /home/user/backups

Then on the line :

select SITE in "mywebsite" "myblog" "myforum" "quit" ; do

put the names of the folders your want to be able to backup. The three choices in this example would correspond to the following three folders on the server : home/www/mywebsite, home/www/myblog and home/www/myforum

Once you have done that, edit each corresponding sections below :

# My Website
if [ "${SITE}" = "mywebsite" ]; then
    SITE_DIR=/home/user/www/${SITE}
    DB_NAME=mywebsitedbname
    DB_USER=mywebsitedbuser
    DB_PASS=mywebsitedbpass
    DB_HOST=mywebsitedbhost
    backupDB
    backupFiles
fi

In those paragraphs, make sure that mywebsite in if [ "${SITE}" = "mywebsite" ]; then corresponds to the folder name you defined just before.

Then enter the database infos in the four lines : DB_NAME, DB_USER, DB_PASS and DB_HOST.

Of course you can create as many choices as you want, depending on the number of folders / sites you want have in your backup script.

If you want to add a folder for a website that doesn’t have an associated database, just use this :

# My Website without database
if [ "${SITE}" = "mywebsitewithoutdb" ]; then
    SITE_DIR=/home/user/www/${SITE}
    backupFiles
fi

That’s it! Now upload the script to your server (for example to /home/user/), then ssh to this folder and run the script with

./backup.sh

Once you have run the script, go check in the backups folder, you should see something like :

mywebsite_www_082309.tar.gz
mywebsite_sql_082309.sql.bz2

For more security, after you have done your backups, you should delete the script from the server (as it contains all your login/passwords for your databases).

Download the script : backup.sh.zip

I hope you like this little script, if you have any suggestions please leave a comment.

Today I took some time to translate this neat little plugin into french.

You can download the translation here : shockingly-big-ie6-warning-fr_FR.mo

Note : The translation is based on version 1.6.3 of the plugin.

You can read it here : Creating a multilingual product catalog with Wordpress and WPML