If your hosting utilises cPanel it is recommended that you backup your website every time you do any significant changes to it.
You can then download the backups to your computer and save them somewhere safe just in case you ever need to restore from them in the future. Our step-by-step guide will walk you through how to do this.
Step: 1
Go to your website’s hosting control panel (cPanel) and login (this will be www.yourdomainname.co.uk/cpanel). If you do not have your login details please contact us (or if you are not hosted with us contact your hosting provider).
Step: 2
Click “Backup Wizard” under the “Files” section.
Step: 3
Click “Backup”.
Step: 4
Click “Full Backup”.
Step: 5
Select “Home Directory” as the “Backup Destination”. If preferred, you can select “Do not send email notification of backup completion”.
Click “Generate Backup”.
Step: 6
Click “← Go Back” and wait on this page for the backup to complete.
Step: 7
The backup file should appear under the “Backups Available for Download” section. You will need to refresh the page (F5 on Windows or ⌘ + R on Mac) to check if the backup has completed (the average website should take less than four minutes).
You will know once the backup is ready to download as the text “(in progress)” will disappear. If it has not yet finished wait a bit longer and then try refreshing the screen again.
Step: 8
Once the backup is complete click on it to download a copy to your computer. Depending on how you computer is configured the download may save to your Downloads folder, if this is the case make sure you move it to somewhere safe and memorable.
Step: 9
Once the download is complete, we recommend that you delete the generated backup file from the server to save on server space and help prevent you from going over your hosting space limit (if you go over your website may go down). To do this, click the cPanel logo in the top left corner of the page to go back to the main cPanel home page.
Step: 10
Click “File Manager” under the “Files” section. If the “File Manager Directory Selection” window appears, select “Home Directory” and then click “Go”.
Step: 11
Find the file in the list that is named something similar to “backup-12-12-2015_13-14-15.tar.gz” (the numbers should represent the date and time of the backup). Select this file.
Step: 12
Click “X Delete”.
Step: 13
A pop-up will appear on the screen, select the check box next to “Skip the trash and permanently delete the files”.
Click “Confirm”.
You can now navigate away from cPanel.
