Helping you get the most out of DirectAdmin and your web site!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This will backup your FTP preferences, such as whether anonymous FTP is enabled and if an anonymous user can upload.
This will backup all DB users and DB settings.
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 a backup is very simple:
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.
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:This feature prevents you from accidentally overwriting a backup file.
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 . 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. You can find more info about directories here.
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. You can find more info how to upload files here.
Once you have uploaded desired files, return to backups section and press button. You will see all the backup files in the /backups directory listed in the dropdown menu. Choose the file you want 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.
Please contact your hosting company for more assistance, or visit the DirectAdmin support forum at http://forum.directadmin.com.