Backing up a forum

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vbuser49

New Member
I had a problem with my forum today and I thought I lost it. Fortunately the problem was fixed by the hosting company but it made me think seriously about backing up the forum. I have no experience with this other than backing up the database through the hosting company's control panel one time before upgrading VB and then not being able to do anything with the backup and having to start the forum from scratch.

I'm looking for the most reliable and easy way to make sure that if everything is lost somehow, I'm talking database and VB files and mods, template changes, additions such as CMPS and VBSEO, photo gallery and pics, that I'm able to get it running again the way it was before.

I've been searching for information here and there are various opinions, mostly about database backup. Solutions such as mysqldump and addons to VB such as mysqlbackup and auto backup. At this point I'm confused. Can someone please give me an overview of the absolute right way to go about it. If it's something that can be done automatically every set period of time then even better. I figure that this is very important info that should be available here in a concise way. Thanks for any help.
 
database:
Alot of hosts will have a backup of your site but this could be a day, a week or even a month+ old so you could lose vital members and thread/posts.

vBulletin have a section in admincp where you can download a backup of your db but this is only recommended if it is reletivly small.

If you use cPanel there is feature where you can d/l your db, or you can go to myphpadmin and d/l from there aswell.

Files:
cPanel has a feature to d/l a full backup of files, in fact you can dl the whole lot not just the contents of public_html.

Using an FTP program is also a good way to backup your files as its as simple as drag and drop.

Restoring DB:
again cPanel have a restore feature that you can upload your saved db but this can be very long and I personnally have found it not to work everytime.
restoring db through phpmyadmin is ok but most hosts have a restiction of around 2 mb so this is only relevent to very small dbs.

I have found that the best solution for me to be BIGDump its a php script that allows you to upload your db file into the same directory as the script and it will stagger a large db while restoring allowing you to bypass your hosts restrictions.

Restoring files:
Again an FTP program is probally the best and easiest as again its as simple as drag and drop :)
 
Thanks very much Hoxxy.

A couple of other questions; What are VB mods like mysqlbackup and auto backup used for?

I saw options in cPanel for complete and partial backups but I didn't see anything for automated backups. Are automated backups possible?

Lastly, in the past I tried to use my FTP program to download the files as a way to backup. The program was never able to complete the download. It would always freeze at %25 or %50 or even %90 of the files. I tried doing it in different times of the day thinking it may be due to internet traffic at that particular time but wasn't able to see a correlation. Do all FTP programs do this? I use CuteFTP. Thanks again for your help.
 
mysqlbackup and auto backup -never used so can't quote on them,
automated backups possible - Dont know
It would always freeze - Odd?! I personally use SmartFTP and have never had any troubles. Try d/l folder by folder rather than all in one go, tedious I know but might stop the freezing.
 
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