Though it may be hard to believe, some web owners don’t venture into their web hosting control panel. This is a shame because control panels contain tons of tools to upgrade and improve your web site. In a series of five posts, HostDime will provide helpful information and clear up confusion to those who want to improve their website, make it run faster, and appear more professional. cPanel will be the example used because HostDime provides cPanel licenses to our clients and it’s the industry leading hosting control panel.
The files section of cPanel contains the following: Legacy File Manager, File Manager, FTP accounts, FTP Session Control, FTP Tutorials, and Anonymous FTP, as well as Backup restore, Backups, and a Backup Wizard. Today we are discussing how to backup your database.
How To Backup Database
Have no fear, one of the easily functions in the control panel is backing up your website. Once in cPanel, go to “Backups” and you’ll see options for a Full or Partial backup.
A full backup includes all of the files in your home directory, your MySQL databases, and your e-mail forwarders and filters. You can back up your account to preserve your data, or to move your account to another cPanel server.
If your account is under 500MB, you can execute an entire backup by clicking “Download or Generate a Full Website Backup”. If your website is over 500MB, you must backup the files and database separately. Sites contain both files and databases, and you must backup both in order to have your site appear as it was before.
Now, how do I backup these files? You must download all files from your “public_html” folder to your computer using your favorite FTP client. We went over last week how to use FTP and gave some examples of our favorite clients. Once transferred, simply upload back the files to your hosting account and your website should be back to normal.
Try to backup your database on off-peak hours when load is low on the server so you don’t inconvenience and slow down other users on your server.
Request a confirmation e-mail when your backup is completed. The backup will run in the background uninterrupted without further interaction from you. cPanel will send you an e-mail with the backup results so you know if it worked correctly.
If you are interested in remote storage, HostDime provides that in-house service. Adding a remote storage service to your hosting account will secure your data in a remote location in our datacenter, and will also help maximize redundancy and improve overall performance with your current server build. You will be able to access your storage in many different ways, including FTP and Expandable Disk Quota.
Mount your remote storage service as a drive on your VPS or Dedicated Server or use rsync to push and pull data from your account(s). Plans start at $10 a month for 20 GBs of space all the way up to $100 a month for 250 GBs. If you are interested or have any questions about our storage service, please feel free to contact a sales representative.
Part 1: How To Use FTP
Part 2: How To Backup Your Database
Part 3: How To Manage Your Domains
Part 4: How To Manage Your Mail Accounts
Part 5: How To Speed Up Your Site
Hat tip to Peter Pollock, author of the upcoming book Web Hosting For Dummies, for the inspiration to write these series of posts.
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Jared S. is HostDime’s Technology Writer. Add him on Instagram and Twitter. Follow HostDime on Facebook and Twitter.
DID YOU KNOW? HostDime offers a wide variety of fully managed dedicated servers that range from basic to the most advanced and sophisticated in the hosting industry!
Can you explain this bit: “Adding a remote storage service to your hosting account will secure your data in a remote location in our datacentre” so this is another server we can hire that is on the network but not open to the web for backup only?
Yes that’s right! you can find out more information here – http://www.hostdime.com/services/remote-storage/
It is always a good option to have the back-up available for important data. The points mentioned in the post serve as a reminder to how the system works and what should be done. Readers can follow the instructions and find an easier way to secure the data.