How to create a backup for Joomla manually?

It is very important to always keep a recent backup of your site. Besides accidents, there are many other reasons which require you to have a backup of your sites. Joomla sites can be compromised by hackers or malicious attackers if the site administrator has not paid attention to security. There are also rare cases in which the hackers bypass the best security. Joomla is designed for teamwork, but many good editors can even make an error to harm the site. There are many bad things that could happen to your site – some of your code can break, an extension can malfunction, or even your site can get hacked. A recent backup of your Joomla 3 site can be a life saver in such cases. Therefore, having a backup of your Joomla website is essential. Here is how to create a backup for Joomla manually. You need to archive the two parts of the software to create a backup copy of your Joomla site manually i.e., all Joomla files and its database.

Joomla comes with more than 3000 core files .You can always use an FPT client to transfer all Joomla folders and files to your local hard drive. You can add your actual media content such as videos, photos, extensions etc but the number of files will grow even bigger. This means that it may take some time if you decide to transfer your files via FTP because multiple small files are slower to transfer than one big file. However, compressing the files into a single ZIP file using the File Manager tool in cPanel to transfer files is a more efficient way. To do this

• Go to the main folder of your Joomla 3 installation, then select all files and press the Compress button in the top part of the page.
• Now, you need to press the Compress File button and the File Manager will create the archive of all the files and folders you’ve selected.
• You can download the files either through an FTP client or you can navigate to the file using a regular browser to download it on your hard drive, once you have created the archive of your files.

Backup your Joomla database

There are two popular ways to create a backup of your Joomla database. The first way is via the SSH console and the second way is to use the phpMyAdmin tool in your cPanel.You need to know your Joomla MySQL database name, password and username for either way.

Backup your Joomla database by using SSH

First you need to access your account in order to create a backup of your Joomla database via SSH.Then navigate to your Joomla site folder. You need to use the information you’ve obtained from the configuration.php file and the mysqldump command to create a backup of your database. Then navigate your browser and download the backup of your Joomla database locally.

Backup your Joomla database by using phpMyAdmin

Login to your cPanel account and open the phpMyAdmin tool which is located in the Databases section. Then select the database you want to backup. The databases will be listed in the left menu of phpMyAdmin. Select your Joomla database and press the Export button from the top menu in phpMyadmin.Finally, leave the options to their default settings and press the Go button.