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Advise on Backing up your websites

13/04/2010 09:37

It is possible to perform full website backups from within your CPanel area (control panel) which can be access via www.yourdomain.com/cpanel (replacing yourdomain.com with your actual website domain name).

The backup wizard will allow you to take a full backup of your website and MySQL database if applicable.

We advise all clients retain backup's of their websites and store them off-line in case the need arises to restore on this server or an alternative server. For each website developed by W.E.B.S Ltd, a full structure and data backup is retained on our internal company servers, but unless specific backup service is requested, structure is only backed up at the point of development. Database backups are performed daily and held off-site, but to make 100% certain that your website and data can be restored in the event of a disaster, we advise additional backups are taken by our clients directly, using the tools provided within cpanel.

*you can access cpanel from within your account management area (where you pay bills), by clicking on My Services and then clicking on the domain which is used for your website.

If you have a static website created on Dreamweaver or some other application, there will be a version of your site stored on a computer somewhere. This is your backup. (Tip: burn this onto CD or DVD as well)

If on the other hand you have a Wordpress site or other database driven system, your site is stored online and probably changes frequently. This means that you have no backup! This short tutorial will show you how to make complete backups of your site using Cpanel. It presupposes a few things. They are:

That you have your own hosting package.
You have access to the Cpanel (this is the main administration screen for your domain/s and webspace).

By the way Cpanel is the most common hosting admin system and it makes it easy to do all sorts of important things from creating redirects to backing up. Here we go.

NOTE: If you really want to be thorough, burn this data onto a DVD and store it somewhere safe.

So here are the steps in point form and then there is a photo gallery below that will show screenshots of the Cpanel pages so you know you’re in the right place.

Login to your Cpanel account with your username and password.
Click on the Backups button.
If you have database driven sites click on the MySql links to download those to your computer.
Under the heading Full Backup, click on the Generate/Download a Full Backup link. (not this one!)
Enter your email address into the field and click Generate Backup down the bottom.
When Cpanel has finished compiling everything into one file, you will receive an email. This shouldn’t take long if you have only a small site.
Refresh this screen or return to it later and click the link (which wasn’t there before) under Previous full backups saved in your home directory:
Wait for it to download.
Backup this file and any Database files onto a DVD and store somewhere safe.
Do this whenever you make any major changes to your site!

If you have a Wordpress site, you can also export all your pages and posts from the Manage tab in the admin dashboard.

Full information can be obtained from the official CPanel instructions provided below

http://docs.cpanel.net/twiki/bin/view/AllDocumentation/CpanelDocs/BackupWizard

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