Buy an external hard-disk.
Set your back-up software (included both with the harddisk and your operating system) to include the Zotero folder (or set the Zotero folder to be in a folder backed up automatically by your software).
Never worry about it again.

There is absolutely no reason to manually back up anything anymore.

If you want to make copies easily, set a custom Zotero directory location, and put it somewhere easy-- like the desktop, My Documents, the like.

no - I think it sounds like rp is doing this right - I second ajlyon's suggestion:
Under Zotero Perferences--> Advanced
you can set a custom directory. If you put that on your desktop or some other prominent place, you can make a back-up by simply copying that folder: That's one click (doing that will also make sure that the folder is included in your automatic back-up. Many back-up systems don't back-up the Firefox directory which includes Zotero.

Also, it would actually probably be hard to do this from within Zotero, as ideally Firefox (and thus Zotero) should be closed before making a back-up, so creating a back-up button would require a whole software routine that creates a copy of the database, closes it and saves it - probably doable, but also not trivial.

Yeah, something link that could probably work -
reflecting on what the original poster says I think what s/he really wants is not an _easier_ back-up option - the current back-up procedure really isn't complicated at all - but one that doesn't require to look at a how-to page.

Right now, a low-tech, manual-hating user (and let's face it, there are many of those) looking at Zotero has no clue how to back up. The most plausible option is to use "export" with the well known unfortunate consequences.
If Zotero had a button - even one that required just as many steps as the current back-up procedure - more people would likely get this right, so on reflection I see the appeal of this (though I still think people should just back-up their entire harddisk anyway...).

It's still a trade-off,though, because such a button would take up space, would need to be well thought out etc. Although, if I'm right about the nature of the problem, a button that just serves as a link to a step-by-step instruction page such as the libguide above might do the trick.

Adamsmith's point is quite right: in the absence of a "backup" sign in the interface, clueless manual-hating users will go for "export" (with the well known fall-out symptoms of coming to ask for help here when it is too late). Seems to me a "Backup your library" button under the Gears wheel would not be out of place and would not take too much UI real estate.

UI suggestion: this should bring up a wizard that looks like the database update wizard. Only choice would be location for saving. Default would be "My Documents\Zotero backup" (or "Desktop\Zotero backup"?). Saving would copy the whole Zotero folder including subfolders.

At the bottom of the dialog window there could be a recommendation saying sth like "If you want to make Zotero backup part of your regular backup schedule, you can choose a custom location for your Zotero folder and place your library in a folder that you regularly backup."

Dan - I might be wrong. I believe rssync default actually excludes hidden folders (which, of course, include the FF profile). I know that BackInTime, perhaps the most comfortable rssync gui client for linux, does that by default.

oh good. Then that's likely just a quirk of my software - wonder why they did that, it always seemed like a very bad idea to me.