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Back up your store
- This is an essential part of the day to day management of any e-commerce site. You should ensure that you make regular backups of your store to prevent accidental data loss or loss from hackers.
- Luckily osCMax has a very useful SQL backup tool which will create a copy of your online database and allow you to download this to your local machine.
- You will also need to keep a copy of the all the individual .php files held on your server.
It is strongly advised that you store your backups on your local machine rather than your server. Further more, it never hurts to have another copy on removalable media in case of damage/loss of the local machine.
Backup your database
- Login to your admin panel
- Goto Tools –> Database Backup
- Click Backup button
- In the right hand panel make sure the no compression radio button is selected.
- Click the tick box marked Download only
- A windows dialog box should now popup asking your what to do with the file.
- Click Save File
You may want to move this file to a directory where you intend to keep all of your backups. You will also see in the filename the date and time of the backup which is useful when trying to work out which backup is the latest version - eg. db_storeowner_yyyymmddhhmmss
Backup your .php files
- Open your favourite FTP program
- Drag and drop the files stored on your server across to your local machine.
Congratulations - you have now backed up your e-commerce store
We would suggest that you keep a copy of these files on a memory stick or similar in case your local machine is infected with a virus or malware.
Alternate Methodology
For those of you fortunate enough to use a good version of cPanel on your server.
- (optional) In Admin, create a Database backup but do not download it - store it on the server.
- From cPanel: Backups| Download or Generate a Full Website Backup. Backup Destination; Home directory. Enter your email address. Generate backup. You will receive an email when complete.
- In cPanel: File Manager at the Home directory level, you will have a tar.gz file, which you can download.
This will contain everything, databases, store files, SSL certificates, emails - the lot! Just remember to delete the file from the server once it has download successfully. 7-zip is a useful application to use, for opening this archive, if you are not a UNIX/Linux user.
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