• Lesson Index:
• Overview
• Installation
• Admin Panel
• User Rank
• User Registration
• Admin Email
• COPPA Regulation
• User Admin
• Adding Forums
• Member-Only Forums
• Moderators
• Disable Forum
• Backup Database
• Admin Password
• Upgrades
• phpBB Skins

Forum and Database Backup:

It is important to frequently backup both the forums source files (such as the PHP and other files) and the MySQL database.

Since most likely your developer has made customizations to the PHP file (such as text change, colors and style changes, etc), you need to backup the whole forum directory and it associated subdirectories. You can simply copy the whole forum directory to your local disk, zip them up if you like, and move it to safe storage.

The database contains all your forum categories, posts, and member information. Afterall, you spent a lot of time obtaining registered users and you don't want to have loose all that due to accidental deletion of the database or hardware failures.

Although the backup takes only several minutes for a small forum, there is still a possibility that some users actively using the board during that time. Hence, it is a good idea to disable the forum during backup.

To backup the database, login as site admin into the Admin Panel at http://www.yourdomain.com/forums/admin

Initiate a full backup as shown...

When you click Start Backup, it will take a while to process. Eventually, it will popup a file download dialog as shown below. So make sure your popup blockers are not preventing this dialog from showing.

Click Save to save this file on your local disk and move to safe location.

This is known as the backup file. It has the sql file extension indicating that it contains a set of SQL statements (database commands) to re-create the data to its current state. Inside the file, it look like this...

If these files becomes too large, you can try specifying the gzip option in the backup screen.

You may be tempted to place the backup file in another directory of your webhost. If you do, please make sure you password protect that directory. Since directories on your webhost are available to the public, anyone who gets a hold of the backed-up sql file will have access to all your members information. Also, if someone stumbles onto the backup PHP file, those files will run right there and then and you don't want that.

Restoring the Database from Backup

To restore the database from the .sql backup file, use the Restore screen to select the backup file from your local disk.

After some processing, you should get a confirmation message as shown...

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