Takumi Vault — Backup & Restore Manager

Back up a WordPress database and files, and restore them in one click — no command line, no third-party account.

Built to hand to a non-technical client: one admin menu, one button, backups stored outside the web root by default.

Why this exists

Most backup plugins either push you toward a paid cloud tier or expose enough options to be dangerous in a client's hands. Takumi Vault does the boring, essential 90%: take a backup, keep a sensible number of them, restore one, and tell someone if it failed.

Features

• One-click manual backup — database, files, or both.
• One-click restore from any saved backup.
• Scheduled automatic backups — daily, weekly or monthly, via WP-Cron.
• Backup history with optional per-backup notes, so "before the theme change" is findable later.
• Download any backup to your own machine.
• Generation management — old backups pruned automatically to a configured count.
• Email notification on completion or failure.
• Stored outside the web root by default, so archives aren't publicly fetchable — and the destination is verified by fetching a canary file over HTTP before anything is written to it.
• Incremental file backups, so the second backup only archives what changed.
• Undo — the database a restore replaced is kept, and the files it overwrote are kept, so a restore can be put back.
• WP-CLI commands, so a backup can run from a real cron entry or a deployment script.
• Runs where other backup plugins can't — no exec(), no mysqldump, no shelling out of any kind. Long jobs are split across requests and resume where they stopped.

Architecture

takumi-vault.php                   Bootstrap, activation, admin menu
includes/
  class-tkvault-storage.php        Destination resolution, exposure probe, permissions
  class-tkvault-preflight.php      What this host can and cannot do
  class-tkvault-jobs.php           Job records, atomic claim, heartbeat
  class-tkvault-runner.php         Chunked execution and continuation
  class-tkvault-db.php             Backup records
  class-tkvault-db-dump.php        Chunked database dump
  class-tkvault-sql-reader.php     Statement reader for the dump format
  class-tkvault-db-restore.php     Chunked restore, safety copy, atomic swap
  class-tkvault-file-backup.php    Chunked, resumable, incremental file backup
  class-tkvault-file-restore.php   File restore and undo
  class-tkvault-scheduler.php      Scheduled backups and pruning
  class-tkvault-admin.php          Admin screens and actions
  class-tkvault-cli.php            WP-CLI commands
admin/views/                       Dashboard, backup list, settings, diagnostics
uninstall.php                      Teardown

Long-running work is split into chunks by TKVault_Runner, which spends a fraction of whatever execution time the host allows and hands the job to the next request. Nothing assumes a single request can finish anything.

Admin actions are capability- and nonce-checked; paths are validated before any filesystem write.

Installation

1. Upload the takumi-vault folder to /wp-content/plugins/.
2. Activate via Plugins › Installed Plugins.
3. Open Takumi Vault in the admin menu.
4. Optionally adjust the backup directory and schedule under Takumi Vault › Settings.

Requirements & FAQ

Where are backups stored? By default in a _backup directory one level above the WordPress install — outside the web root. Configurable in Settings.

Does it need mysqldump, SSH or WP-CLI? No. Everything is PHP and the WordPress API. exec(), shell_exec() and friends are never called, so the plugin behaves the same on shared hosting where they are switched off.

Can I drive it from the command line? Yes, and it is the most reliable way to run it:

wp takumi-vault check && wp takumi-vault backup --type=all

check exits non-zero if anything would stop a backup, so it can gate a deployment. The command line has no execution time limit, needs no loopback request and does not depend on WP-Cron, which only fires when somebody visits the site.

Is it safe on a live site? Yes. Work is chunked, so no request is ever asked to do more than it can finish.

Changelog

1.1.0 — WP-CLI commands: backup, restore, undo, list, check.

1.0.0 — Initial release: manual and scheduled backups, one-click restore, history with notes, downloads, pruning, email notifications.

License

GPLv2 or later. Developed and maintained by Yoshiro Moriyama, founder of Takumi Web Services — a WordPress development studio in Toronto, Canada.