What do you use for backups of your Joomla web site? Until Joomla 1.6 (thanks Sam for adding this) there has been no backup routine built in to Joomla and yet backing up your website is the most important thing you should do.
No matter what your web host offers as a backup service this is your responsibility and only yours. Backups are too important to rely on anyone but yourself.
As you hopefuly realise there are two separate parts of your Joomla web site to backup, the database and the files, and without both your backup is useless.
But do you need to back them both up with the same frequency and can you easily rebuild your web site from your backups in an emergency, even on a new host.
Personaly I run three separate backup procedures on all my important websites.
- A nightly ftp backup of all the files
- A nightly mysql backup of the database
- A weekly backup of the entire site (files and database)
The nightly ftp backup is done using ws_ftp pro using its automated backup and synchronisation routines.
The nightly mysql backup is done using a Joomla plugin, there are several available, that emails my gmail account. (Note I usualy create a separate gmail account for each web site).
Finaly and most importantly I use JoomlaPack weekly, and after any major site changes, to do a complete site backup. The advantage of joomlapack is that it not only creates a backup but also creates an installable version of your site. Think of it as a tool to create a custom Joomla install. If the web host ever goes down or you need to move the site to a new host then it is very easy, and quick, to use the JoomlaPack backup to re-install the site on a new host.
