The Easiest way to Backup Your Website and Why you need to do so

E-Collins

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If you are a blogger then the first thing you need to know is how to backup your website/Blog data in case if something went wrong and am sure you know how to do that but there are few things you still need to know especially if you are new to blogging.

I started blogging in 2012 but since then backing up my website regularly is not on my daily or weekly task because I trust my hosting provider to backup my data on daily or weekly basis but last year I lost my data because of my carelessness and that is why I want you to avoid making the same mistake I made.

There are few ways to backup your website and I have classified it into 3 types as follows.

Automatic backup
Third party Automatic Backup
Manuel backup

I classified it this way so that you can easily understand it but we need to dig deeper to fully understand each type of the backup as listed above.

Automatic backup

This method allows you to automatically backup your website files right from your Cpanel with no stress all you need to do is to trigger the backup from Cpanel and the rest will automatically be done, more on this later.

Third party Automatic Backup

Any backup done by your web hosting provider or any other web service providers can be regarded as a third-party Automatic backup since it's not done by you.

If you are using Wordpress then you can easily find a paid or free plugin that can do the magic without you doing anything but to help you protect your online property.

Manuel backup

Manuel Backup or you can call it offline backup is when you manually downloaded your website files to your personal computer and saves it where you will remember it if the need arises then you can equally upload it again to fix any error that might occur in the future.

When manually backing up your website files you will either download the whole website files and database together or decide to export your database separately, more on that below.

Let's not forget that I initially mentioned that I lost some of my website data because I failed to backup my website regularly leaving that responsibility to my web hosting provider alone but something happened when I migrated from shared web hosting to virtual private server (VPS).

You can read how I Successfully Moved my site from Web4africa to Inmotion

When I was using Web4africa sharing hosting plan they always have my weekly backup but when I moved to my VPS I was instructed to do the backup as regular as I wish since I have more disk space allocated to my hosting plan but I still don't pay attention to it until when I mistakenly deleted some of my important files but don't have any backup files to restore it and even the files that my hosting provider had is a bit old.

What I learned after losing my data

I managed to restore most of my data but I vowed not to make such mistake again and since then I have been backing my website up almost every 2days to make sure such thing doesn't happen again.

The Easiest way to Backup Your Website

Am sure you have seen the reason why you need to be backing up your data on a regular basis and its time to show you the easiest way to Backup Your Website.

Manually downloading your website files might cost you some time and data and paying other web service provider do the back for you might cost you some $$ but you can easily backup your website files including the backup automatically without spending your time or data.

There is two option in Cpanel named Backup and backup wizard that enables you to either download all your website files manually or automatically back it up in your server where you can easily restore it when needed.


Looking at the image above you will see the backup option marked with red, which only helps you to download your data and save it for future use which is good but will surely cost lost of data though it depends on the size of your website.

The second option is Backup wizard which helps you to backup your website with just a few clicks and everything about your website will be downloaded and kept on your server within few minutes and that is why I choose this option as the easiest because you don't any data or need to wait all you need to do is trigger the backup and you will be notified when the backup is complete.

There are 2 important files you need to backup namely Database and server directory files.

Database & Server directory

The database contains some of your website data such as your post, comments and functional structures while the design and other functional parts of your website are been kept in your server directory and mostly in public_html.

Steps on how to easily backup your website.

I have already explained few ways you can backup your website above but I will concentrate on the Automatic backup which is the easiest for me.

To get started login to your Cpanel and click on the Backup wizard and you will be taken to another page where the website will get your website data ready for download or just to save it in your server



This wizard will not only allow you to backup your database and your website files but will as well allow you to backup your emails and the configuration settings.

To move to the next step simply click on the Backup


This step will enable you to fully backup your website or choose between the home directory, MySQL Databases and email forwarders but if you just want to backup everything simply select full backup and proceed to next step.

Note:

Quote
This method of full backup will only create an archive of all the files and configurations on your website. You can only use this to move your account to another server, or to keep a local copy of your files. You cannot restore full backups through your cPanel interface.

When you download one of the generated back-ups and keep it safe then you are secured because even if your hosting provider disappeared overnight you will still be in business.

The final step is to generate the full backup by clicking on generate backup as you can see below



You might choose to be notified when the backup is fully ready to be downloaded but it will be saved to your home directory.

Finally, i thank you for spending few minutes reading this post but if you still have more question to ask then feel free to do so.
 

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