Thread

I just launched my first EE site about a month ago (loved it!) and have a follow-on question I’m hoping some of the more experienced folks can address.

Since I’m only used to creating static sites, I have no idea how to address the issue of backup and/or archiving of a dynamic site. To elaborate a bit, when I would make a static site I’d have ALL the site’s files on my local Mac AND on the web server. With the EE site, all those files and the database are on the web server only.

Any tips on best practices for doing backups of the site? I’d hate to have the web host go kaplooey and have to tell my client he’s SOL.

Many thanks in advance.

There are some Cron plugins available that you can use to backup the database part automatically by including a tag in one of your templates. Great if you have no true cron service as part of your hosting. In addition, you’d just backup the complete EE folder structure (including the root part, e.g. index.php, path.php, the images and themes folders and so on) with FTP/SCP to your local Mac. Don’t forget the database backup that is created by the plugin. Best, clear the cache before transfering the files ... will save you lots of time and disk space.

If you have shell access on your server, you of course can set up a script to automatically tar the complete directory structure and the database backup, compress it and store it in one archive file for easy access.

If you don’t need a full backup, path.php, config.php, config_bak.php, your personal additions to the plugins, modules, language and extensions as well as the images and themes folders and of course the database backup are the most important things to backup.

Hope that helps
-Markus

It’s fairly easy, only three main things…
1) I save all my templates as files and back those up via FTP…
CP Home ›  Templates ›  Template Preferences
2) Database backup…how often you do it depends on how often the site changes…
CP Home ›  Admin ›  Utilities ›  SQL Manager ›  Database Backup
3) Keep backups of your config.php file (In the EE system folder)

Of course I have backups of all images/interface files also.