[Spoon Fed] 100% Backup & Restore your website/forum.

[Shawn Patel]

This tutorial might have a few grammar errors. I didn't re read this but it should still be easily understandable.

Once you have your website completely set up, you think you're good to go right? Well what if your host suspends your site for some bullshit reason and you lose everything? (Personal experience)
Once you complete your site, you just might wanna backup everything so you don't have to re do anything in the future. You might just think if you download all of your website files you might just be good to go, but doing that will achieve nothing. You would lose the majority of your website if you don't also back up your MySQL database. Your mySQL database covers the majority of your website. Without your database, you would lose all of your user account, forum posts, mostly 90% of your site would be gone.

Assuming you have the following things and have common sense, this tutorial will work flawlessly with you.

• WinRAR
• GZipper
• FTP Program
• A Webhost
• cPanel webhosting panel

Will work with any hosting panel, but I'll be using cPanel for this demonstration.


What this small tutorial will feature:

• Backing up your entire website
• Restoring your website

_______________________

-Part 1. Backing up your website.



1) Open up your cPanel and go down to the backup portion located under files.




2) Once there, click on the "Download or Generate a Full Website Backup" button.



Once you click the button, you will be asked to input your e-mail address. once your backup is complete, you will receive an email notifying that your backup is complete. You may now go back to the backup section of your control panel and download your backup.



You can backup your website multiple times. Each backup can be found and downloaded in the backups part of your control panel.




3) After you have downloaded your backup file, extract it somewhere safe on your computer. The backup file should look somewhat similar to this:



Once you have that file, you're pretty much safe. You will be able to restore your website anytime as long as you have that file.

_______________________

-Part 2. Restoring your website.


1) On the backup file you obtained from backing up your website, you should see a .WinRar archived file called homedir. Right click the file and extract it to homedir. (Should be a normal blank file included in your backup file. If not, then just simple make a blank file and extract the contents of the .rar homedir into your new homedir.




2) Once you have extracted your homedir file, you should now see a public_html file. Upload the contents of your public_html file to your Webhost's public_html. Upload your files using your favorite FTP program. I'm assuring you know what a FTP program is or you wouldn't have any files to backup in the first place. I personally use [Only registered and activated users can see links. ].


3) When you finish uploading your files, you must thing you are done right? Well go take a look at your website. Nothing huh. You still need to restore your MySQL database in order for your website to be 100% restored.

Go to your backup files and look in your "mysql" files. You should see a file that corresponds with the file(s) you have just uploaded to your webhost.



Get your corresponding MySQL file (Usually the biggest sized file) and gzip it. If you don't have a gzipper, then you can download one from here: [Only registered and activated users can see links. ]


4) Go back to the backups part of your hosting panel. Look down a little bit and you should see "Restore a MySQL Database." Chose the file you just gzipped and click "Upload." This may take awhile depending on your internet upload speed. Make sure you don't select the sql file for upload. It has to be the gzipped one or it won't work.



If successful, you should get something similar to this:



If the file is finished uploading and you still see "Restoring Database" and nothing else, then you did something wrong. After uploading you should see the followed text. (Or something similar) As I said, uploading the file might take awhile depending on speed and size so don't freak out if you don't see the followed text for a bit.


5) After your gzipped MySQL file is finished uploading, go ahead and make a new database and user. If you can remember your database details from your old database which corresponded with your website, then use those details. If not, then it's fine.



Also make sure you have added a user to your database.





6) Now finally, head over to the phpMyAdmin section of your hosting panel.



Click on the database you just made,



and click on import.



Click on "Choose File" and find the sql file you want to upload. This is the same sql file that is corresponding to the files you backed up, and the same sql file you gzipped. Though this time, you want to select the ACTUAL sql file, not the gzipped one.



This upload might take a bit longer as the file isn't zipped. Though once the upload is complete, your website should be back like a charm!



If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to post below.
This guide was made by me, Shawn.
Hope this helps.

[Rag3]

Nice Tutorial .

[RS Wiki]

nice, i know people will use this method. thanks

[Shawn Patel]

Hopefully people will use this lol.

Webhosting account got suspended a long time ago and I lost 25k forum posts and a shit load of members. Don't want the same thing happening to others lol. >.<

[Shawn Patel]

Few grammar errors, didn't really re read till now. On iPad though .

[Unlucky4ever]

Nice tutorial

[t r i n i t y]

Thanks mate

[Enjoi]

nice, people do need to know this. you should include how to backup via FTP client too.

[Nick RsPsC]

Great tutorial man, will come in use.

[Tomp]

The G-Zipping thing is weird. I managed to get it to work without the gzip. Other than that everything worked fine. thanks