How to use cPanel to backup your website
by Paul Flyer
You’ve heard it a million times. BACKUP YOUR DATA!
The question is, are you?? If you are not, you really need to be doing so.
Again, let me repeat, you really need to be backing up your website.
Beginners probably have their website hosted on a shared environment with cPanel running as the administrative tool. You can easily backup your website (files and databases) with cPanel. Here’s how:
- Go to www.yoursitedomain.com/cpanel
- Enter your username and password - if you do not know this information please contact your web host.
- Click the ‘Backup’ icon located on the main screen
- Click ‘Generate/Download a full backup’
- The “Full Backups” screen will display
- Select your backup location (choose Home Directory)
- Make sure your email address is correctly entered (once the backup is complete you will be emailed)
- Click Generate Full Backup button
- Backup file will be created in your home directory
- Once the full backup of your account has been completed you will receive an email message to the email address you specified
If you cPanel looks different from above don’t freak. Some web hosts setup cpanel differently. Here is an example:
- Look for a main toolbar icon labled “Tools”
- Click “Backup” from the left menu
- Follow instructions above starting with number four (4).
The backup file will be created on your home root directory. It will be a tar.gz file. This file can then be FTPed off your server to a local drive or CD (or both!) for safe keeping. I recommended doing this weekly at the LEAST.
You will have noticed during this process something stating the following (or something similar):
Full Backups allow you to save a complete, compressed copy of all of your site data either to your home directory locally or remotely to an FTP server. Full backups CANNOT be restored by CPanel automatically. Only your server administrator can restore a full backup automatically. If you want to be able to use CPanel to restore your backup files, you must use the separate HOME, SQL, ALIASES and FILTERS backup features, and then you can restore them below.
While this is a true statement keep in mind the following:
- The full backup contains A LOT of information. It contains MORE than you NEED but ALL that you WANT.
- Don’t worry! While this file cannot be restored automatically via cPanel, the correct pieces can be extracted and restored manually. It is just one huge zip file. Know that every file has been backedup as well as SQL statements generated for recreating and restoring databases.
Using cPanel to backup your website piece by piece is a post for another day!
[tags]backups, backup, website, web, cpanel[/tags]
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[...] How to use cPanel to backup your website by Paul [...]
September 21st, 2006 at 12:08 amHey, great write-up! Not to be a total noob, but does this actually backup your MySQL databases as well?
September 21st, 2006 at 11:39 amReally useful information. I learned how to do this not too long ago, and since then I’ve been backing up my data weekly.
(I found you via ProBlogger, and so far this is definitely the most useful “How To” I’ve seen. Nice work.)
September 21st, 2006 at 12:38 pmI can never back up enough, eh??
Our how-to is up as well if you’d like to check it out!!
September 21st, 2006 at 1:47 pmCary - Yes. It is not an actual physical database file. Instead it is a sql file that has “create table” and “insert” statements to recreate the database. If you look in the zip file, find the “mysql” directory. Your sql file will be there. A single sql file will be created for each database.
September 21st, 2006 at 2:04 pmNancy - Thank you! BTW, if I ever meet a child named Splenda I’m going to faint.
September 21st, 2006 at 2:04 pmMamaDuck - Quack Quack Double Quack. (I hope you can translate)
September 21st, 2006 at 2:05 pmit’s good advise, normally people take it seriously only after disatster strikes …
September 22nd, 2006 at 1:03 am[...] 60. How to use cPanel to back up your website by Paul [...]
September 22nd, 2006 at 12:05 pmInteresting tutorial. I love it.
But there’s a new software now that can automate the backup process. Maybe you guys wanna check this out:
http://www.cpsitesaver.com
Hope this helps.
September 23rd, 2006 at 11:06 am[...] How to use cPanel to backup your website by Paul [...]
September 24th, 2006 at 2:11 pm[...] How to use cPanel to backup your website by Paul [...]
September 25th, 2006 at 7:08 amThansk for the post Jahn. Looks promising. Will take a look at it for a future post.
September 25th, 2006 at 9:20 am[...] How to use cPanel to backup your website by Paul [...]
September 26th, 2006 at 6:40 am[...] How to use cPanel to backup your website by Paul [...]
September 26th, 2006 at 10:37 am