Questions about The Timing And Sequence Of Backing Up

[fabienne]

I was wondering if any of you back up certain files at certain times. For instance, if you back up your Database once a week, but back up your admin file once every two weeks? I am just using this as an example. Also, which files do you find the most useful to back up, and which ones would you say 'don't bother'. Do you back up your add-ons, or would you be more inclined to download and install a fresh copy if anything happened to your Zen Cart? Thanks, I am looking for advice on what works for you as a practical matter.

I am using the plugin "Backup Zen Cart v. 1.1"

[stevesh]

It depends a lot on the site, but we have one with Zencart, a forum and a blog (three databases). We back up all the files (I'm not sure why anyone would just back up some files) and the databases twice a day. Our host backs up everything every 24 hours, so we're never more than 8 hours behind if something happens.

[fabienne]

My host backs up 3 days worth and can provide me with it instantly. That is good, however, I wanted to put another layer of security and backup to a storage device in my office as well. I was using Backup ZenCart for that, and it works fine unless you ask it to back up too much information (like asking it to backup everything) when the screen goes blank and nothing happens. So, I was going to backup in chunks, and not back up what had not changed. I need to backup the databases for my ZenCart, and a forum (which has its own backup program). So I was wanting to make sure that I was backing up the right things. In case of disaster, I would most likely download a clean copy of ZenCart and install, then put in the things I backed up in the proper places.

It seems that the things which would fall in that category are: admin, includes, images, the database. I don't want to forget anything. And I do have several add ons and some which have sort of intricate settings on them that I would not like to recreate. Thanks.

[DrByte]

I was using Backup ZenCart for that, and it works fine unless you ask it to back up too much information (like asking it to backup everything) when the screen goes blank and nothing happens.

That symptom sounds like the script is running longer than PHP is preconfigured for the script to be allowed to run. A default configuration of PHP sets the max-execution-time to 30 or 60 seconds, because it's rare to need a script to run longer than that, and if there were thousands of visitors on your site all running really long scripts then the server would croak from overload. So, it's a good setting to leave alone. But maybe that addon needs some improvements to make it either tell the server to ignore the time limit or set a longer one, or run itself in smaller segments that don't take so long.

As for breaking it up into other segments, yes you can do that, but if you're trying to do that with an addon, then if the addon doesn't already give you ways of breaking things up then you'll have to get into writing custom code for it anyway. So you're back to the same issue again.

[fabienne]

Thank you, Dr. Byte. Several other people have said that the backup will not go if there is too much data to backup, but it is a good program otherwise. I need to try backing up the add on to see if I can get it all done.

[stevesh]

As for the files, we just use the CPanel File Manager's Compress function and download the resulting .zip file to a local computer.

[fabienne]

I don't understand PHP and MySQL perfectly, I am working on that, but I admit that I am not an expert. So, if you would please answer a very basic couple of questions.

First, you are saying that I can go into my host and the MySQL Admin area and download a zipped copy of the entire site, right? I did try that and it seems to have worked. I chose to download ALL of the information there, it worked great. I got a file which I could open in Excel and it contained all of the information (I believe) which was on the webhost.

Second, as I understand, there are two parts to a php site like ZenCart: the structure of the site and the data in it which is stored in the MySQL area of the host. I want to back them both up, does the download I just talked about in the paragraph before accomplish downloading and saving the php structure of the site or just the data which has been input into it? I suspect it is the latter because I don't see any files named includes, for instance, which I would expect to see as a part of a php site's structure. If it is the latter, how would I go about saving the structure of the Zen Cart site in an efficient way? Which files should I back up there?

I am taking a php/MySQL course now on line but it's not real flexible or practical so I am asking these questions here. Thanks.

[DrByte]

Anything you do in phpMyAdmin to handle MySQL data is ONLY dealing with database stuff.
PHP files would be handled separately ... typically by downloading via FTP.

This article explains both: http://www.zen-cart.com/content.php?...ith-phpmyadmin

[fabienne]

Thank you, I suspected that was the case but you confirmed it.