Website Solutions
by Connecting Rainbows
How to Backup Your Website
I had a little website accident recently. While making real-time live updates to my website through my FTP program (a no-no by the way), I hit the delete option on the website folder. Yup. The entire folder. I watched the log file notifications flashing the word “deleted” over and over again and I stopped it too late. My website, which I had just finished making major modifications to, was GONE!
Did I have a website backup of all my changes? Nope!
I immediately emailed my hosting company and asked them what they could restore for me. Unfortunately, they had just replaced some drives and the most recent backup for my site was three weeks ago. None of what I really needed was going to be on those backups. I had to redo all of my changes.
This prompted me to post an article by Lynette Chandler, “Website Backups and Why You Need to do Them”. The article reminded me of a time when one of my client’s websites was hacked. Most of her website was overwritten by malicious code and her web host didn’t have a complete backup for her either. (Luckily, I did.)
These things really do happen folks! And you need to protect yourself.
So, how do you backup your website?
(By the way, if this is all too techie for you and you are concerned about the security of your website data, contact me and I can probably do your backups for you.)
cPanel Backup Wizard
If your web host provides a cPanel type control panel, you can perform your website backups using the backup wizard in the files section of the control panel.
1. Access your cPanel by going to http://yourwebsiteurl.com/cpanel and logging in with your hosting username and password. (Page not found means either your don’t have cPanel or you forgot to replace the url in that link with your own website’s url.)
2. Find the Backup Wizard in the Files section and click on it.
3. Click on the Backup button.
4. Click on Home Directory under Select Partial Backup to back up your website files. (This type of backup makes it easier to restore later.)
5. Click on Home Directory to download your backup file.
6. Click Save when prompted and save the file to a folder on your computer where you can find it later if you need it.
7. If you have a database associated with your website (WordPress for example), you will want to repeat this process (Go Back button) and click on MySQL Databases to backup your database.
8. Log out of your control panel. You’re done.
FTP Website Backup
When I need to do just a file backup (no database) and the hosting company hasn’t provided an easy way to do website backups, I use FTP software. I personally use CuteFTP Pro, so I am including basic instructions for that here.
1. Open CuteFTP and connect to the desired account.
2. Navigate to and open the folder that you want to backup.
3. On the toolbar, click on Tools, then Folder Tools, then Backup Remote Folders.
4. Browse to find the local folder you want to store your backup in, ensure you have the remote folder listed that you want to backup, and click the Include subfolders box. Click Next.
5. Choose your compression type and click Next.
6. Either select Run Now or schedule reoccurring backups.
7. Click Finish and close CuteFTP. You’re done.
Other Website Backup Options
1. If your website is small and you don’t have a database to worry about, you can use your hosting file manager to copy all of your files to your computer.
2. If you have access to phpMyAdmin, you could export your database and save the exported file to your computer. (Beyond the scope of this article.)
3. Contact your web hosting provider and inquire about their website backup procedures.
3 Responses to “How to Backup Your Website”
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November 25th, 2008 at 9:36 am
If you don’t want to get too technical (I hate this) you can always use a dedicated solution for this very important task just like I do. I bought Site-Vault to backup my sites and I am very happy with it.
November 25th, 2008 at 11:17 am
Hey Joshua. Thanks for the recommendation!
December 3rd, 2008 at 5:44 pm
[...] sure you own your website accounts and files. Have your own website backups just in case. Keep in touch and don’t make assumptions. (You don’t want to end up with [...]