How to create a backup of your website in cPanel

The Full Website backup is a feature in cPanel using which you can Create Backups of your full website, your emails & also your MySQL databases in a single zip file. This feature allows you to generate a full/ partial backup of your website and store it on server which you can then download later to your PC/Computer or your local hard drive.

The main advantage of creating a backup is that in case your website is having any problem at any time in future, then you can easily restore your website to a past date by simply restoring the backup files in your cPanel.

It is recommended to always take backup of your website before making any important changes in your website or database or cpanel. This way if anything wrong happens then you can easily restore your old website backup.

But please note that restored website will be same as it was on the date when you took backup. So for example if you have a website backup of your website that you took 3 days ago, and if you restore that backup then your website will be the same as it was 3 days ago after website restore.

Below are the steps that you need to follow to take full back of a website using cPanel:
Step 1: Login into your cPanel hosting account.
Step 2: In your cPanel, scroll to the Files section & click on the “Backups” icon.

Step 3: Now under the “Full Backup” section, click on “Download a Full Website backup” button.

Step 4: You will now see the “Full Backup” page. Under the “Generate a Full Backup” field, you need to enter the following:
Backup Destination: In this field, you need to select the folder in your cPanel where the backup will be saved once its generated by the cPanel.

By default cPanel will save the backup in “Home Directory” in the cPanel. You don’t need to change this. But if you want to change it then you can change it from the drop-down.
Email Address: In this field you need to enter your email address to which you want to receive the notification once the cPanel has generated your backup.
Or you can select “Do not send the Email notification of backup completion”, if you don’t want to receive any notification once the backup is complete by cPanel.

Now click on “Generate Backup” button and wait for the backup progress to get complete.

Step 5: Once the backup is complete you will receive a notification on your email which you have given in previous step.

Step 6:To download the backup from your cPanel go to Backups > Download a Full Website Backup.

You will see you generated backups under “Available Backups To Download:”. You will see files with name such as: “backup-2.15.2016_07-53-16_abdcom.tar.gz

Click on the backup file name to download it to your PC or your Computer.

Congratulations! Now you have the complete backup of you website.