
Using Joomlapack to Backup a Joomla Site
Posted on 29.05.2009
I ventured into the world of backups, dev sites, and migrations this week. To my pleasant surprise, it was one of the easiest Joomla processes I’ve yet to adopt. A few simple steps and I had my site backed up and was sleeping peacefully knowing that I had successfully added one more layer of protection to my online presence. I whole heartily tip my hat to the developers at Joomlapack who have put together what I am touting as one of the best Joomla extensions ever. Here’s the steps I took to make a backup:
- Download the Joomlapack component and the Kickstart.php utility from the Joomlapack website.
- Install the Joomlapack component in the administrator backend of your site.
- It may give you a few warnings that you need to resolve. The great thing is it tells you how to resolve them!
- The file format may be set to .zip by default but you’ll want to change it to the jpa format which is best.
- Then you click backup and watch it run.
- Save the backup file locally or leave it in a secure folder on your server.
If you want to get really fancy, you can setup some cronjobs on your server to automate the backup for you at set days/times. And then if you want to migrate or restore a site, here’s what you need to do:
- Upload the kickstart.php and the jpa backup file to the root of the new target site
- Setup a new database on the new site and write down the host, username, db name and password.
- Use a browser to go to www..com/kickstart.php
- Follow the step by step instructions and enter the new database name/password etc when asked.
- Your site will appear just as it was before.
I’ve used Joomlapack twice now and it is now officially a part of my Joomla repertoire.
Backup and sleep well.
Nas
hi thanks for the instructions, i followed it to the letter. problem is i can log into my sites backend (admin) but when i type in my site address it comes up with site under construction…what do i need to do to make my site live ? thanks
Kevin McLeod
Try clicking on Site-Global Configuration. Then click on the “Site” tab. Then where is says “Site is offline” change it to “No”. That should do it.