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Blazej Mrozinski
v0.11.9 April 26, 2026

Blog: WordPress Backup Automation (WP Infra Part 6)

New blog post: "WordPress Backup Automation: Nightly Backups, Database Cleanup, Cache Warming, and Plugin Sync" — Part 6 of the WordPress Infrastructure from Scratch series.

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  • New blog post: "WordPress Backup Automation: Nightly Backups, Database Cleanup, Cache Warming, and Plugin Sync" — Part 6 of the WordPress Infrastructure from Scratch series. Walks through the full nightly cron chain for production WordPress servers: automated per-site backups to cloud storage (WP-CLI exports plus file rsync, compressed and uploaded nightly), a MariaDB database optimization and cleanup script that prunes transients, expired options, spam comments, and Action Scheduler garbage, a cross-server plugin distribution system (cloud storage as the plugin registry, each server pulls the zips it needs), a five-phase cache warming routine that crawls the XML sitemap to prime FastCGI and Redis caches before first-visitor TTFB, and full server snapshots to cloud storage with restic. Closes with the morning-verification routine and how the log format is designed to be scannable in 30 seconds. Labelled `infrastructure`.
  • Scheduled for 2026-04-26 via frontmatter `date:`. Visible on the live site within minutes of the 00:05 UTC rebuild cron after that date.
  • Internal links: Parts 3 (`deploying-wordpress`), 4 (`four-layers-of-caching`), 5 (`locking-it-down`) linked inline in the "What's Next" section; full series TOC at the bottom links all 7 posts.
  • Outbound link: companion repository at `https://github.com/b1azk0/wordpress-infrastructure` under the `06-automation/` directory.
  • Primary keyword: `restic backup` (Ahrefs US: 250 vol, KD 12, traffic potential 1100, CPC $3.50). The post is one of very few that combines restic with WordPress, the primary differentiator from generic WP-backup-plugin listicles.
  • Secondary keyword touches: `wordpress automated backup`, `cron job`, `WordPress automation`, `cache warming`, `sitemap crawl`, `plugin distribution`, `WordPress database optimization`, all worked into H2s during the 2026-04-15 Ahrefs validation pass. H2s rewritten from their original creative names ("wp-backup: Site-Level Backups to Cloud Storage", "wp-maintain v3: The Database Cleanup Beast", "wp-plugin-sync: Cloud Storage as Plugin Distribution") to the keyword-leading forms now in the post.