This is my backup script which syncs my server to my dropbox every day.

more.md

The script below is triggered every day from my Mac. I use Hazel to move the tar.gz to an external hard disk once it's finished. This happens every day without me noticing. You can exclude folders if you want to. You probably want to exclude giant cache folders.

You should have a similar script.

site-to-dropbox.command

rsync --exclude="w3tc/" -a --del -e ssh user@example.com:~/webdirectory/ ~/myname/Dropbox/Backups/webapps
cd ~/myname/Dropbox/Backups/webapps
dt=$(date +%y%j)
tar czf webapps$dt.tar.gz webapps

Curious: How you get it to ssh login without having to enter a password? I know I've seen people do this, but don't remember how.

@matthewlein I use SSH Keys: https://docs.webfaction.com/user-guide/access.html#using-ssh-keys

Please tell me how to trigger the script on Mac. :)

You can make a crontab entry or a StartupItems.

Thanks for this, my host doesn't play nicely with WordPress backup plugins, but this script seems like its a great workaround.

My cpu would go skyrocket after I installed this script, when doing a backup with TimeMachine.

opendirectoryd used over 50% of my CPU.

Seems TimeMachine chokes on the symlinks of Dropbox.

Find and delete them with find -L ~/Dropbox -type l.