Web servers are just like PC's - It's not a matter of if they will crash; it's a matter of when.  The reality is nobody thinks about backups until they are needed. The story is all the same, my website got erased, my hosting company disappeared, or the server is crashed - I lost everything!

Your websites are important and valuable. They have taken days or weeks of work to build. Your business may depend on it. Although we do back-up of all the websites reside in our server on a regular basis, but you should not rely solely on it (please refer to our hosting terms of service).  Keeping a backup copy of your website on your personal computer is a wise precaution and it's your responsibility to maintain a backup copy of your sites for use in an emergency.

Follow the following steps to perform full backup of your websites from the cPanel.

How to generate a full backup of your CMS website in easy steps?

We host all our clients' websites in a secure shared hosting environment.  We use the world leading web hosting control panel, the industrial standard ‘cPanel'.  In this post, I will show you how to backup your website (web files and databases) effortlessly with cPanel.  However, anyone who has access to cPanel from other hosts may actually benefit from these guidelines below:

1) Type www.yoursitedomain.co.uk/cpanel in the URL of the web browser (use either Internet Explorer or Firefox)

2) Enter your username and password, then press ok (please note that login details are case sensitive).  If you do not know the login details/ information, you may contact us.

3) Once you login to the cPanel, click on the ‘Backups' icon under the ‘Files' section of the main screen, see below.


4) In this screenshot, click ‘Download or Generate a Full Web Site Backup' button

5)  The "Full Backup" screenshot will look like this example, see below:



6) From above screenshot, select your backup location from the first field ‘Backup Destination' - usually it is in the ‘Home Directory'.

7) In the second field, enter your email address (make sure your email is correct)

8) Click ‘Generate Backup' button

9) Backup file will be created in your home directory with the .tar.gz file extension

10) Once the full backup of your account has been completed, you will receive an email notification from the cPanel system to the email address you have specified in step 7.  Now it is time to download a full backup file on your own PC's.

The full ‘Backups' allow you to save a complete, compressed copy of your entire website, including your Home Directory, MySQL Database(s), Email Settings, Email Forwarders, Email Filters and other information.  The backup file (with file extension .tar.gz) can be located in your home directory or public_html via FTP access.

Please note that you cannot backup your website automatically from the cPanel - only your server administrator can restore a full backup automatically.

If you want to be able to use cPanel to restore your backup files, you must extract the contents from the .tar.gz completed backup file and use the ‘Partial Backups' feature to restore each set of data/ information manually (Home Directory, MySQL Database(s), Email Forwarders, Email Filters). The ‘Partial Backups' may require some technical knowledge, if you require support, please email to support@kongnectdesign.co.uk 

I hope you find this tutorial useful.