Backing Up Your Database

If you have databases created in Cpanel -> MySQL Databases, then you can use the following techniques to create a database dump.
For the purpose of this document, we'll assume our cPanel username is username, and our database is called example (the full database name in cPanel would be username_example -- all databases are prefixed by the cPanel username).

Cpanel

1. Go to Cpanel -> Backups -> Download a MySQL Database Backup
2. Select the link to the name of the database you want to download (we'll use a database called example)
3. When you click on the link for example, your web browser should prompt you to save the file.
4. The file you save will be called example.sql.gz.
5. This is a gzipped (compressed) database dump.

phpMyAdmin

phpMyAdmin is a useful tool to manage your MySQL databases. You can use it to export a database dump (and import it as well).

1. Login to Cpanel and click on MySQL Databases
2. Scroll down to the bottom and select phpMyAdmin
3. In phpMyAdmin, select the database from the drop-down menu on the left.
4. Click the Export tab at the top of the screen.
5. For most purposes, you can leave everything as the default.
6. Scroll to the bottom and click the checkbox "Save as File"
7. Click "Go". Your web browser should prompt you to save a file called username_example.sql

SSH

If you have SSH access to your account and you are comfortable with typing on the Unix Command Line, you can use the following technique.

1. Login to your account with an SSH client.
2. Type this command:

3. This creates a database dump called example.sql
4. If you want to compress the file before downloading it (optional):

4. You can download the file using your FTP/SFTP program of choice.


Backups Explained
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