This section covers choosing what to save, creating backups, storing backups, and restoring your site from a backup. We suggest that larger sites backup their data at least once weekly, while smaller sites should back up every 2-4 weeks.
Choosing What to Save
First, access the site backup menu by clicking on the “Advanded Features” -> “Create/Restore Backups” icon. As you can see, there are many things to backup.
Website Data
Domains Directory
This will backup all the files in your domain directory. If you have more than one domain, then all your domains will be backed up. Backed up folders include: logs, private_html, public_ftp, public_html, and stats. Because subdomains are in your public_html folder, they are backed up also. Choose this option if you are only concerned about the content of your web site, and not the settings.
Subdomain Lists
This will backup the subdomain names that you have created. It will not backup the files inside the subdomains. Use this option if you have many subdomains. If you fail to backup the subdomain lists, you will have to manually recreate each subdomain in the event of a system failure.
- E-mail Accounts: This will backup all accounts from all emails (names and passwords)
- E-mail Data: This will backup all messages from Inbox, IMAP folders, and webmail data.
- E-mail Settings: This will backup all filters and the catch-all e-mail address.
- Forwarders: This will backup all the forwarders created by you.
- Autoresponders: This will backup all autoresponder accounts and the message content of the autoresponders.
- Vacation Messages: This will backup all vacation message settings and the vacation message itself.
- Mailing Lists: This will backup list, digest-list and archives.
FTP
FTP Accounts
This will backup all FTP accounts created by you. Please note that it does not backup any files in the FTP directories. If you need to backup the content of the FTP directories, please select “Domains Directory” from “Website Data” section.
FTP Settings
This will backup your FTP preferences, such as whether anonymous FTP is enabled and if an anonymous user can upload.
Databases
Database settings
This will backup all DB users and DB settings.
Database data
This will backup all MySQL databases associated with your account. You should backup your databases often, especially if your site depends on them (for example, forums).
Creating Backups
Creating a backup is very simple:
- Place a check box next to the items you wish to backup (see above section).
- Click the “Create Backup” button.
At the bottom of the screen you will see that your backup is being created. You can exit or do anything you want freely now, once backup is created, you will recieve message, which will confirm it.
Additional Information
The backup file takes the form of:
[backup]-[Month]-[Day]-[Year]-[Backup Number]. If you created several backups on the same day, they would look like:
- backup-Jan-24.2018-1.tar.gz
- backup-Jan-24.2018-2.tar.gz
- backup-Jan-24.2018-3.tar.gz
This feature prevents you from accidentally overwriting a backup file.
Storing Backups
Although backups are stored in the /backups directory, we suggest that you download backup files to your computer. This is the safest method because backups stored on the server may be lost in the event of a system failure.
To view all saved backups, click on the button “Restore Backup“. You will see list of all available backups. (Note: backups exist in /backups directory).
From here you may select desired backup and restore it.
You may also download and upload desired backups with FTP or File Manager. All backups exist in your home /backup directory.
Restoring Your Site from a Backup
Step 1: If the backup file is on your computer, upload it to the server.
If you have a backup file on your hard drive you must upload it to the /backups directory. This can be done through FTP client or by clicking on the “System Info & Files” -> “File Manager” in the main menu.
Step 2: In the backup menu, select the file to restore.
Once you have uploaded desired files, return to backups section and press Restore Backup button. You will see all the backup files in the /backups directory listed in the dropdown menu. Choose the file you want to restore.
Step 3: Select the items to restore.
In the file below, only “E-mail” items were backed up. (Note that items not backed up do not appear in selection menu).
At this stage you can choose which items to restore. For example, in the above picture we are choosing to restore all e-mail items except for vacation messages. After you are finished, click the “Restore” button.
If the restore is successful, you will see “restore will run in the background” notification. After restore is complete, you will get notification message about successful restore.
