Unlimited Backup Schedules With Cron Syntax

mySites.guru lets you create unlimited backup schedules, each defined with a cron expression. You pick the timing, the frequency, and which Akeeba Backup profile to use - per schedule.

Example schedules

• Daily morning - back up using the “Default Backup Profile” and save on the server every morning
• Nightly FTP - send a backup to FTP every evening
• Weekly offsite - send a backup to Amazon Glacier once a week on Tuesday

Each schedule is one of these dialogs, so the examples above are three separate schedules on the same site. Give it a name, choose the profile, set the cron expression (in UTC), and press Save changes. The Enabled switch pauses a schedule without deleting it, and clicking one of the example expressions fills the box for you.

Cron expression syntax

Cron syntax is a standard way of defining when a scheduled event should run. If you’ve ever configured a server, you’ve probably seen it.

If you want more detail, see the Wikipedia article on cron expressions - but most agencies using mySites.guru will already be familiar with cron.

Cron has 5 segments: * * * * * (a star means “every”). So * * * * * means every minute of every day - probably not what you want for backups.

You can adjust the syntax for granular control. Some examples:

• Daily at 09:15 UTC - 15 9 * * *
• Weekly on Tuesday at 12:34 UTC - 34 12 * * 2 (the 2 represents Tuesday, where 0 = Sunday)
• Monthly on the 26th at 04:36 UTC - 36 4 26 * *

Can you use different backup profiles per schedule?

You can specify a different Akeeba Backup profile for each schedule. This means you can run a daily on-server backup, a weekly off-server backup, and a monthly Amazon S3 backup - all at the same time.

If you’re already using Akeeba Backup Professional, this is where those extra profiles actually become useful.

Powered by Akeeba Backup

Akeeba Backup Professional is the backup solution we’ve integrated with since day one. We use their API directly and recommend their tools to every customer. The website backups page covers how mySites.guru drives it.

mySites.guru also supports the All-in-One WP Migration backup plugin for WordPress.

How Often Should You Back Up?

When we migrated existing backup schedules to cron syntax, here is the backup frequency breakdown across our user base:

Take a backup before any major changes, and set a frequency that matches your risk appetite. The gap between your backups is the amount of data you stand to lose - keep that gap as small as practical.

Where should you store your backups?

Never store backups on the same server as your website: a single datacenter fire or server compromise could wipe out both your site and its backups in one go.

Akeeba Backup Professional supports Amazon S3, FTP, Google Drive, and other remote storage services. Most of them cost almost nothing.

For a broader look at scheduling backups, audits, and updates, see our dedicated scheduling guide.

What about existing schedules?

If you had backup schedules configured before the switch to cron syntax, those were automatically migrated. We took your selected profile number and daily/weekly/monthly setting, looked at the date of your last backup, and generated an equivalent cron expression.

For a complete guide on fitting backups into your update and maintenance workflow, see managing CMS updates at scale.