How To Backup Your Entire Website - Backing Up All Whole Entire Site Files

As as admin, its imporant to make back up copies of your files. You just never know when you are going to need them.

QL How often should I backup my files?
A: I reccommend backing them up at least one a month.

Q: How do I get a Linux Server to host my webstie?
A: Our friends at www.webune.com have Linux Dedicated Server Hosting. which means you have your own server for your self or company, with its Dedicated Server Package, come access to your Linux Shell.


Q: How to you make the backup simple and easy?
A: Linux is great, I will show you how you can do this, follow these instructions:

1. Login to your shell. (i will be using SSH to login to my server)

2. Once you are logged in, cd (change directory) to the parent directory you want to backup. for example, i want backup my /var/www/html/ directory and I am going to name the backup file as html_backup_12_7_2006.tar.gz, i would executed this command:

3. Now comes the actual backing up. We will be compressing our directory along with its subdirectories and files, along with its owner and permissions so in the event we need to upload to the web server in an emergency, all the permission are going to be the same and we wont have any issues with permission settings. so to do this send this command:
With this command I am telling the shell to compress ( tar) the /html directory and the name the compressed file as html_backup_12_7_2006.tar.gz with all the same permissions ( -pczf )

4. Once you execute the above command, the shell will process it, if there was a problem, you will see and error, otherwise, it you don't see an error, then you are ok. The next step is to confirm that you backup file was created. so to confirm send this command to list all the files in the /var/www/html/ directory: The ls command tells the shell to "List" the files in the current working directory.

5. Once you have executed the "List" command, you should see a file called: html_backup_12_7_2006.tar.gz html

6. Ok, so how to do get it to your computer? Lets asume that your public directory is /var/www/html/ this is the location where all you public files are, by public I mean that if you can open the files in the /var/www/html/ with your browser. Lets say for example, you have a file called contacts.html in the /var/www/html/ directory, so when you open this file with a browser, you are typing the url: http://www.yourdomain.com/contacts.html This means you are actually openning the file /var/www/html/contacts.html

7. To move the backup file: html_backup_12_7_2006.tar.gz html to the html/ (public) directory, send this command:
mv is the shell command for "Move", with this command i am telling the shell to move the html_backup_12_7_2006.tar.gz html file into the html directory

8. Now that you backup file is in the public directory, you can download with your browser: http://www.yourdomain.com/html_backup_12_7_2006.tar.gz Once you time this url into your browser, you will start to see your backup file download, then you can save it in your local drive.

9. DONE. You've just dowload all you web site file. Dont' you feel better now?

10. Has this tutorial help you? if so, wallpaperama would appreciate a link to wallpaperama.com - Why do we ask this? We ask to link to us because by linking to wallpaperama.com you will help to make these tutorials more available to other people just like you who have benefited from learning this simple to use tutorial created by the Wallpaperama Team. Thanks