Complete Site Back Up with Putty and FTP

Complete Site Back Up with Putty and FTP
This is an easy and simple guide to COMPLETE BACK UP of your sites with few simple commands that you may like to keep handy when you are using SSH via Putty. If you know about a better back up process please share your comments.

I am sure there are numerous other ways to Back up your sites. However, I found backing up sites using Putty and FTP is the best. Well there is another trick too, if you have database files, such as MySql database. You should always take back up of your database frequently. Though I use WordPress for most of my sites, the back up steps are same with any kind of websites.

First of all, you need a SSH client to connect to your server. I use PUTTY as my SSH client. PUTTY is FREE and easy to use.

Note: For most of the “Shared Servers” you do not automatically have access to SSH. You should contact your hosting support requesting SSH access. Many times they will ask you for identification. A copy of your Driver’s License or Passport should work.

Now as you have putty, lets connet to the SSH.

Once you have the PUTTY screen, enter your “Server Name”, then “User Name” and “Pass Word” to connect to the server. Once you are connected you need some basic commands to perform back up work of your site.

I prefer using TAR to back up my site. Use the TAR command for the folder you want to back up ( use “cd” – change directory command if you have to to go to the site). For most of the servers everything is basically within the folder “public_html”. You can tar the whole site using the command. To tar any other specific folder, change the folder name.

Once you have done that, depending on the size of your folder, it may take from few seconds to couple of hours to produce the tar.gz file. Once the TAR process is done, you will see the public_html.tar.gz file in your server with any FTP client. Now you need to use some FREE FTP client to downlod your FULL SITE BACK UP (all files except the database).

If you do not have a FTP client, google for one. I prefer CORE FTP client.
Download Copre FTP Client from here: http://www.coreftp.com/download.html

Connect to your FTP server with suername and passwd.
Find out your desired tar.gz files. Download them to your computer ot back up device.

NOTE: I always prefer to add the date to the downloaded file or put inside a folder with the date of back up. Always remember to keep atleast 2 previous back ups. You can probably delete the older back ups as you go.

To back up My SQL database, check my other easy guide.

[tubepress mode='tag', tagValue='Wordpress', tubepress orderBy='relevance' [tubepress resultsPerPage='6']