In my last post I showed you how to use the WP-DB-Backup plugin to scheduled automatic backups of your WordPress database and have them sent to you via email.

My emails are hosted with Google Apps and that is where my database backups are sent.  I don’t want my inbox getting cluttered with these emails though so I created a filter to automatically handle them for me.  Here are the filter settings I used.

Firstly log into your Gmail and click on Settings -> Filters -> Create New Filter.

The backups emails are sent from wordpress@yourdomain.com.  Because I have backups for several different domains being sent to the one Gmail mailbox I set a “From” address of wordpress@ for the filter.  I also then set “Database Backup” (including quotes) as the subject to filter on (so you don’t also snag all your comments notifications).  Use the “Test Search” button to test your filter criteria before proceeding to the next step.

Now tick “Skip the inbox”, “Never sent it to spam”, and then “Apply the label:”.  Select the dropdown list next and create a new label.  I called my label “WordPress Backups”.  You don’t need to apply a label if you want, because you can always just search your mailbox for the emails, but I prefer to do it this way.

Once you are happy with your settings click on “Create Filter” (or “Update Filter” in my case because I am editing an existing filter).

Note: sometimes “out of sight, out of mind” kicks in and you forget to verify that your backups are running.  Be sure to regularly check your Gmail mailbox to confirm that the latest backup has been emailed to you.  This is where using labels makes things very easy.

Tagged as: Backups, Gmail, Plugins, WordPress