Every backup plugin I have ever installed wanted to be my friend. It wanted to show me a dashboard. It wanted to tell me about its premium tier. It wanted my email address and, eventually, my credit card and a folder full of my files sitting on some server I had never heard of. All I asked it to do was copy my database somewhere safe.
That is the whole problem with backup plugins. They do too much. The free version does almost nothing useful, the useful version needs a cloud storage subscription, and the genuinely good one is bundled inside a $200-a-year security suite full of features you never wanted. Somewhere in there is a simple job: copy the database, copy the files, check that the copy actually worked, and keep it where you can reach it. Nobody seems to want to just do that job and leave.
Vault does that job and leaves.
It backs up your database and your files, on a schedule or whenever you press the button. It verifies the archive before it tells you the backup succeeded, because a backup you cannot restore is not a backup, it is a comforting feeling. Restoring is one click. It keeps track of what it has backed up before and what has already been cleaned up, so your server does not slowly fill with old copies. And it stores everything on your own server, in a hidden folder with a randomized name, where you control it.
Here is what it does not do: send your database to anyone else. There is no cloud account and no subscription: your backups live on your server, under your control. No upsell on the next screen either, because there is nothing to sell you there. That is the entire point.
A quick note on why this exists as its own plugin. Vault is the backup engine inside several other plugins in the This Is My URL lineup. It was always doing the quiet work in the background. Pulling it out so it can stand on its own seemed more honest than hiding a perfectly good backup tool inside something else.
Now the honest part. Vault is not finished. There is nothing to download today, and I am not going to invent a release date I cannot keep. It is in progress. When it is ready, the code will live on GitHub at https://github.com/thisismyurl/thisismyurl-vault, and you will be able to read every line of it before you trust it with anything.
Until then, your backups are your own business. I just want to make that part a little less annoying.
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