Backing up my blog

April 1, 2026 - 12:47 PM

Using the hooks provided by Pure Blog I was able to set up my blog to automatically commit and push my /content directory to a private repo to keep a backup of all of my content in the event of a disaster on my VPS. The VPS also takes nightly backups but off-site backups are also a good idea.

Below is my /config/hooks.php file which defines a simple function that sets a target directory and builds a few git commands to execute. Then calls the function in the publish, update and delete hooks.

The only thing other than this that I needed was to create an ssh key for my Pure Blog user and get that set up with the git repo so it can push without needing a password.

<?php

function pureblog_auto_backup_git(string $action, string $slug): void
{
    $postsDir = __DIR__ . '/../content/posts';

    // Check if the directory exists and is a git repository
    if (!is_dir($postsDir . '/.git')) {
        error_log("PureBlog Hook: $postsDir is not a valid git repository.");
        return;
    }

    $currentUser = shell_exec('whoami');
    error_log("PureBlog git executing user is: " . trim($currentUser));

    $command = sprintf(
        'cd %s && git add . && git commit -m "Auto-backup: %s post %s by user %s" && git push',
        escapeshellarg($postsDir),
        escapeshellarg($action),
        escapeshellarg($slug),
        escapeshellarg($currentUser)
    );

    // Execute the command, redirecting output to the null device to prevent it from hanging the process
    exec($command . ' > /dev/null 2>&1 &', $output, $resultCode);
}

function on_post_published(string $slug): void
{
    pureblog_auto_backup_git('publish', $slug);
}

function on_post_updated(string $slug): void
{
    pureblog_auto_backup_git('update', $slug);
}

function on_post_deleted(string $slug): void
{
    pureblog_auto_backup_git('delete', $slug);
}