Backup your database in cPanel

In this article I'll walk you through how easy it is to download a database backup of your MySQL database from within cPanel.

Backing up your website's database periodically is always a great thing to do, as someone who has lost data myself from failing to remember to back up, I can't stress enough how important it is to backup your database to save yourself stress down the road.

Almost every application that websites run off these days is powered by a back-end database. If some data goes missing in your database, either accidentally from removing things from within your application's administration section, or from database corruption or malicious activity, all of that stuff you've probably spent hours working on is gone for good in some cases when it's not in our daily backups any longer.

Anytime I'm getting ready to make any large changes to a site, upgrading to the latest version of a particular application, or I just got done with some great content posting, I go ahead and grab a local copy of my database backup for safe keeping.

Backup database in cPanel

1. Login to your cPanel.
2. Under the files section, click on Backups.
3. Now under the Download a MySQL Database Backup section, click on your database name, in this case userna5_wordpress.
4. Go to the folder your web-browser downloaded the database backup to, and you should now see the compressed .sql.gz file.

Now you'll have a good working copy of your database locally stored safely on your own computer. If you delete something by accident, or are having any other database problems, you can then restore your database from that good backup.

You will also more than likely be interested in learning about how to backup website files in cPanel, and restoring website files in cPanel now that you know how to backup a MySQL database.