Backing Up Your Website

If you’re anything like me, you want to build and make changes to your website as quickly, excitedly and impatiently as possible. Common sense, and most web developers, tell us that we should work on a local installation and then move the site to a live production platform. I know it doesn’t always happen that way and many people build their site live.

This tutorial will explain how to take your live site and make a fully functional local backup – a backup on your computer. I use WordPress and a Mac, however these steps should work for any platform and operating system. Some of the particulars may be slightly different.

At a minimum the tools you will need are…

• A FTP tool such as FileZilla or Cyberduck. I use Transmit on my Mac
• Administrative access to your server
• A local server utility such as Wamp or Mamp
• A code editor

Take a moment to familiarize yourself with the tools. And FTP is simply a method for transfering files. The local server utility allows you to run a CMS such as WordPress or Jomla! on your computer. Most of the tools I mentioned are free and run on either Mac or Windows. So, let’s get started!

Getting the files and folders onto your computer

1. Log into your server through the FTP and navigate to your File Manager. Download the entire root folder of your site. If you have loads of images and videos it may take a while.

2. Log on to your actual server account and navigate to phpMyAdmin.

3. Chose the database you want to back up. From the navigation bar at the top select Export.

4. Under Export select SLQ

5. Under Options select Structure, Add DROP TABLE / VIEW / PROCEDURE / FUNCTION, Add AUTO_INCREMENT value, Enclose table and field names with backquotes, Data

6. Finally, under Save as file, select Zipped and click GO!

Congratulations! You’ve made a full backup of your site! Now lets get it working on your computer.

Running your site on your computer

1. Get your local server up and running. Go into your local phpMyAdmin and create a database using your site’s name. Make note of your local url. It will most likely look something like… http://localhost:8888/yoursitename. Place the site folder you downloaded to the location specified by your local server application.

2. Open the SQL file you downloaded and replace any occurrences of your live url with your local url. Save the file.

3. Navigate to the database you created in your local phpMyAdmin and click Import. Choose your file, make sure SQL is clicked and hit GO. It may take a while. Be patient. Don’t refresh.

4. Open the config.php file within your site folder. Make the appropriate changes to the database info. In my case I changed the live database name to the local database name, the password to root and the username to root.

5. In the past I’ve had problems with the .htaccess file not being included in the root folder download. I just created a new one, copied the info from the live one and made any changes to reflect the live setup.

6. Navigate to your local url (http://localhost:8888/yoursitename). You shouldn’t have to run the CMS setup. Everything should be in order. Login as you normally would by appending the login part of your live url to your new local url. You may have to adjust plugins and posts to reflect the changes.

Thats it! Let me know how everything went.