DEV Community

Piotr
Piotr

Posted on Originally published at thebuzzbazaar.com

Native WordPress Backups With Off-Site to Your Own FTP or WebDAV

GOMAX ULTIMATE 5.48.0 adds a native backup engine that dumps your WordPress database and zips your uploads on your own server — on a schedule, with rotation — and copies each backup off-site to your own FTP or WebDAV storage, with no third-party backup plugin and nothing ever passing through a vendor cloud. Backups are the one thing every site needs and the one thing that shouldn't depend on someone else's service; now GOMAX does it itself.

Until now, GOMAX could ask another backup plugin to run — useful, but it meant relying on a separate tool. This release makes backups first-party: the engine lives inside the plugin you already own, and the copies go wherever you tell them.

Key takeaways

  • Native, self-hosted. A gzipped SQL dump of every table and a ZIP of your uploads, created on your own server — no backup plugin required.

  • Scheduled with retention. Turn on daily or weekly backups and keep the newest N; older ones rotate away automatically.

  • Off-site to your storage. Copy each backup to your own FTP or WebDAV endpoint — bring-your-own credentials, which stay on your site and are masked when read back.

  • Selectable scope. Back up just the database, just the uploads, or the full set.

  • Manage and verify. List backups, verify one is readable and valid, delete old ones, and test the off-site connection — all from the API.

Why native and off-site matters

The golden rule of backups is that a backup on the same server as the site isn't really a backup — if the server is lost, so is the copy. That's why off-site matters. But most off-site backup services want your data flowing through their cloud, on their subscription. GOMAX takes the opposite approach: the backup is created locally and pushed to storage you control — your FTP account, your WebDAV endpoint, your rules. It fits a pay-once, privacy-first, self-hosted product exactly: the capability is built in, and the data goes only where you send it.

How it works

  • Create. run_backup with a scope of db, uploads, or full writes the files into a protected wp-content/gomax-backups folder (locked down so the web can't read it).

  • Schedule. Set daily or weekly with a retention count; a background job runs the backup and rotates out anything beyond your keep-limit.

  • Off-site. Configure an FTP or WebDAV target with your own credentials and every new backup is uploaded there automatically. test_offsite confirms the connection before you rely on it.

  • Manage. list_backups shows the catalog with sizes and dates, verify_backup checks a backup is intact, and delete_backup removes one.

The database dump is written table-by-table in chunks and gzipped, so it stays memory-friendly, and the uploads ZIP is size-guarded so a huge media library doesn't blow up the request — for very large sites you can scope to the database and lean on off-site storage.

Frequently asked questions

Do I still need a backup plugin like UpdraftPlus? No — the native engine backs up your database and uploads on its own. GOMAX can still hand off to a detected backup plugin if you have one, but it's no longer required.

Where are the backups stored, and are they safe from the public? In a protected wp-content/gomax-backups folder with a deny rule and an index guard so the files aren't web-accessible. For true safety, enable the off-site copy so a backup also lives on storage you control.

Does my data go through GOMAX or any cloud? No. Backups are created on your own server and, if you enable off-site, uploaded directly to your own FTP or WebDAV endpoint. Nothing passes through GOMAX or a vendor cloud, and your off-site credentials stay on your site (masked when read back).

What if my uploads folder is huge? The uploads ZIP is size-guarded to avoid overwhelming the server; if it's too large it's skipped with a note. For big media libraries, back up the database on a schedule and copy media off-site separately, or run scoped backups.

Can I check a backup is actually good? Yes. verify_backup confirms the files are readable and non-empty and, for the gzipped database dump, that it opens correctly — so you know a backup is valid before you ever need it.

Top comments (0)