How to create a backup using FTP
Written by Brad MarkleBacking up your website is a necessary step for all users. Be sure to read our Do you run backups of your servers? article for an overview of how backups are maintained for our servers.
cPanel includes an easy feature to backup your website, however, if your site is very large you'll want to use an FTP client to download your website files instead. The process is quite easy, and in this article we'll show you how to do backup your files using the Filezilla FTP client.
1. Download and Install Filezilla
The first thing you'll need to do is download Filezilla, and you can do so on the following page:
2. Use Filezilla to connect to your account
After you've downloaded and installed Filezilla, use the quick connect feature to connect to your ftp account. To do so, you'll need the following settings:
Host: For the host value, enter yourdomain.com. For example, if your domain name is domain-abc-123.com, enter domain-abc-123.com
Username: Enter your cPanel username here.
Password: Enter your cPanel password here.
Port: The default port number is 21, but you can leave the port blank here.
3. Download your files
After you have connected, you can then download your files. There are several different ways to do this, we recommend the following:
In the following directions, you will be working within different quadrants in FileZilla. The following screenshot defines them:
In the upper-left window, click your desktop to open it.
In the lower-left window, right click and choose "Create New Directory"
Label the directory so that you will recognize it later. In this example, we named the folder "Website Backup" followed by the date.
Double click the new directory in the lower-left window to navigate to it.
In the lower-right window, click any folder and then hit Ctrl-a on your keyboard to highlight all of the files and folders
Selecting all of the files and folders in the above step will download all files in your hosting account, including files used by cPanel. If you don't want to backup every single file, you can hold Ctrl on your keyboard and only click the folders that you want.
public_html: If you want to download your website files, select the public_html directory
Email: If you want to download your email, select the mail directory.
Databases: Your databases are not stored in the same directory as your hosting account. If you would like to download a backup of your databases separately, please see the following link: http://support.inmotionhosting.com/userguides/cpflash_x3/cpanel_x3_backup.htm
Right click on any of the highlighted files / folders and click "Download". This will download all of your files / folders to the "Website Backup" folder that we created above. Please note that the time it will take to download all of your files will depend on the number of files that you have and how large they are.
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karenratte@gmail.com
2012-12-16 3:34 pm
yes, I found that CPanel put a lot of load on the server. Does downloading with Filezilla increase the load considerably on the site?
Hello karenratte@gmail.com,
Thank you for your question. If your site is more than 3GB in size, we definitely recommend downloading the files using an FTP client such as Filezilla, which is available online for free.
Here is a helpful link to a Getting started in FTP guide].
I would still recommend using an FTP client, but you should be able to download smaller files from cPanel without the load on the server being affected.
If you have any further questions, feel free to post them below.
Thank you,
-John-Paul
Thank you for your question. If your site is more than 3GB in size, we definitely recommend downloading the files using an FTP client such as Filezilla, which is available online for free.
Here is a helpful link to a Getting started in FTP guide].
I would still recommend using an FTP client, but you should be able to download smaller files from cPanel without the load on the server being affected.
If you have any further questions, feel free to post them below.
Thank you,
-John-Paul
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