Joomla Backup tutorial

Tuesday, 21 July 2009 21:02

This tutorial is going to show you how to create a backup of your Joomla website. Backup is the most important thing in the maintenance of a website. Performing backups on a regular basis will help you to recover your website from security breaches, mistakes or any software/hardware failure with minimal or no loss of information.

Making backup of a Joomla website consists actually of two parts: downloading website files from remote file system to your local computer and exporting the database that Joomla uses.

Joomla backup can be done manually or using special tools intended for this task. In this tutorial I'll show you both ways.

Manuall backup

Downloading Joomla files
To back up the Joomla files to a safe location such as your local computer, you can use an FTP client to connect to your account. Then navigate to your Joomla application folder and download it to your local computer. Alternatively you can use a file manager in order to download the files. File manager will allow you to compress the files before you download them and thus download them much faster. JoomlaXplorer is a great Joomla file management extension which should fit for this task.

Exporting Joomla database
There are many ways to export the MySQL database that Joomla uses. We'll do it in the most common way - using the phpMyAdmin utility. This tool is very often installed by the hosting provider but in case it's not you can use this simple Joomla extension to have phpMyAdmin as part of your Joomla website.
Ok, now launch phpMyAdmin tool and login. Select the database from the combo box on left. In case there are more than one databases you can identify the Joomla one by checking the table names. By default all Joomla tables starts with "jos_" prefix; there should be few dozens of such tables.
After selecting the database you should click on the "Export" tab and just follow the instructions from there.

Backup using Joomla tools

Joomla community has created over time several automation tools to ease the backup process. I can recommend few of them.

JoomlaPack component - JoomlaPack is an open-source component for Joomla that performs a full site backup - both files and database. The backup file it creates contain a special installation directory, similar to the one which originally ships with a new Joomla installation, which will restore the entire website when executed. You can use it also for hosting migration.
LazyBackup2 plugin. This one takes a MySql dump and emails it to you daily or any time period you decide. Only backs up the database, the files are NOT backed up. This plugin is also free.
JoomlaCloner complete backup solution. Allows you to backup and restore your site in minutes. It also has the added benefit of helping you move from one host to another. This component is commercial.

Here you go! All what's left now is to be persistent and always remember that backups ARE important.

Tags: backup Joomla backup security breach database export Joomla database manual backup FTP client Joomla file manager phpMyAdmin hosting migration