Backups: the one your host keeps is not yours

A Joomla site is two things: a folder of files and a database. Lose either and you have nothing. Any backup that does not cover both is not a backup.

What has to be in it

• The whole Joomla folder, including configuration.php, your template and any extensions.
• The database. This is where every article, menu item, user and setting lives.
• images/ and anything else uploaded after launch. It sits inside the folder, but it is the part people most often forget when they copy "just the important files".

Doing it by hand

Pull the files down over SFTP and export the database from phpMyAdmin or the command line. It works, it is slow, and you will stop doing it after the third time. Fine as a one-off before a risky change, not as a routine.

mysqldump -u user -p databasename > backup.sql

Doing it properly

Akeeba Backup is the component almost everyone lands on. It packages files and database into one archive, can push it to off-site storage, and restores through its own installer. It is not part of Joomla, and it is worth the install.

Set a schedule that matches how often the site actually changes. A brochure site that gets edited twice a year does not need nightly backups. A shop does.

The part that matters

A backup you have never restored is a hypothesis. Once, on a spare domain or a local install, take your newest archive and put the site back from it. You will find out in an hour whether your backups are real, instead of finding out on the day it counts.

And keep one copy somewhere that is not the same server. A backup living next to the site protects you against your own mistakes, not against the server going away.