One of the most important things, when you have a website, is to make sure you have a backup of it to recover from if something unexpected happens. And there are many unforeseen things that can happen: the website may be compromised, the web hosting provider may no longer be trustworthy (whether they are deleting your account if you somehow violate the terms and conditions or have a catastrophic error and lose all data on the server) or you just want to move the website from one web hosting service to another.
In this article, I’ll explain to you how to create a backup for your website using cPanel, an web administration interface that comes installed on many of the web hosting packages but you can also purchase it separately. I will mainly talk about how to do it with a website that was developed using WordPress, a very popular free platform. The same steps can be followed to create a backup on websites developed on other platforms (such as Joomla, Drupal or even websites created in HTML only).
What do you need to know?
In order to make a correct backup of a website developed on WordPress, there are two things needed: a copy of the database and a copy of all the files on the server in the public_html folder. Be careful! It is not enough having just a copy of the files, it also requires a copy of the database, without it being impossible to restore the website to the desired version.
The steps for creating a backup of your website are very easy to follow:
1. You go into the admin panel of cPanel
2. In the Files section, you look for the Backup Wizard button
3. In the open window, select the Backup button
4. In this window, we need to pay close attention.
A full Backup option cannot be used to reconstitute the website in case it will be compromised; it only helps to migrate the website to another web hosting account. This is why you will have a number of additional steps to follow. First, you will create a backup for the database/databases and then a backup for the files on the server.
5. Press the button called MySQL Databases, where you will find a list of databases that you created in your account. Click on each database to download a copy of it.
6. Then press the Go Back button to return to the screen at point 4, then press the Home Directory button.
7. In the open window, press the Home Directory button again. At this moment the download of the Home directory backup file should start.
Everyone should have at least one backup of his/her website. So many things can happen in our digital world that the effort to create a backup is so much smaller than the loss of all the work someone has put into building and promoting the website. This practice is good to become an ordinary one and investing in the best backup solution is directly proportional to the investment in the website itself. In this way, the impact of a possible loss of the website can be significantly reduced.