Hello,
 

I have a forum with IPB 3.4.7 which is very old, so it needs to be updated. I have paid for them to do it, but I need to take a full back up of my community. I used to have a friend do it for me, but he's not around to help right now, so please can you let me know how I actually take a full back up of my community, so I can learn to do it :-)

Thanks

Do you have a server admin? If yes, ask them to provide a full one-time backup of database and files. 

Do you have cPanel? If yes, there's an option to make a backup via the panel. 

I'm the admin of the forum. I just used to have help from another admin so I haven't done things like these in many years.

I can access the forum cpanel and the server's cpanel, I just don't know where to go to do the full back up. My server is a GoDaddy server.

There should be instructions for cpanel that you can find on how to save a backup.  

If you need managed assistance, there are several competent third party providers in the community like @Makoto @ASTRAPI @DawPi and @Spanner who can help not just make a backup, but also run test conversions to prep your board for upgrade.  

 

Thanks, do you know where I can find a tutorial, so I can try myself? I have searched for it, but haven't found it yet.

You should refer to cpanels official help resources for further assistance.  

you can take a look here

https://documentation.cpanel.net/display/74Docs/Backup+for+cPanel

Login to cpanel for your site/account and see:

Go to the backup wizard and click backup:

 

Optionally go to just backup and do the same and then maybe back up your databases as well separately. Its pretty straight forward.

 

Thanks so much for the link and screen captures. Now I have something to try and see if I can get it to work.

Thanks so much everyone 🙂

I have now done the back up and got an e-mail that it has finished. Is there any more I need to do? Should I download it to somewhere or is it okay, that it's just on another place on the server.

13 minutes ago, Majbritt_merged said:

I have now done the back up and got an e-mail that it has finished. Is there any more I need to do? Should I download it to somewhere or is it okay, that it's just on another place on the server.

It should be listed on the same page as the backups were done. Download them and keep a local copy. Good idea to do this every now and again.

Thank you. I'm downloading now.

Thanks for the help everyone 🙂

I accidently did another back up when i tried to download the file yesterday and now I have too much on my server. I already downloaded the back up, so that is good. How can I delete the back ups on the server so it doesn't take up too much space?

7 minutes ago, Majbritt_merged said:

I accidently did another back up when i tried to download the file yesterday and now I have too much on my server. I already downloaded the back up, so that is good. How can I delete the back ups on the server so it doesn't take up too much space?

SFTP in, (filezilla) find the folder where the backup is saved and delete the file. It's probably a gz file.

Thank you. I just can't find it in Filezilla. I have looked everywhere and can find many files created that day, but not the backup file. The back up file I have downloaded is 21 GB and I just can't find this big a file on my server.

In what folder is it usually placed?

Edited March 8, 20205 yr by Majbritt_merged

The closest I get is in a folder called logs. It has gz files, but with different dates and not the size I'm looking for. In my mail it said it was saved in the home/my user directory, but I just can't find that through Filezilla.

 

I finally found it, hooray 🙂

Edited March 8, 20205 yr by Majbritt_merged

You should see a /backup folder if you're using cpanel.

 

Just now, SJ77 said:

You should see a /backup folder if you're using cpanel.

 

EDIT: oh I see you found it! Great news

Oh, the problems keep coming. Now they need access to PHPMyAdmin and SSH and I have no idea how to give them that. I have never used it and don't know what it is.

They also ask me to turn off the site, which I do think I can do, but then I need to update the server to php 7.1 or above and again, I have no idea how to or what it is.

On top of that, my hosting company sent an e-mail saying this: Beginning March 18, cPanel will be forcing all servers to update to EA4 from EA3, which could break your site. We're strongly encouraging our customers to upgrade now. That way, if anything breaks, you can still roll back to EA3 and troubleshoot without your site being down for the length of time it takes to fix the problem.

Yes, great, more to deal with that I have no idea about 🤨

16 hours ago, Majbritt_merged said:

Oh, the problems keep coming. Now they need access to PHPMyAdmin and SSH and I have no idea how to give them that. I have never used it and don't know what it is.

They also ask me to turn off the site, which I do think I can do, but then I need to update the server to php 7.1 or above and again, I have no idea how to or what it is.

On top of that, my hosting company sent an e-mail saying this: Beginning March 18, cPanel will be forcing all servers to update to EA4 from EA3, which could break your site. We're strongly encouraging our customers to upgrade now. That way, if anything breaks, you can still roll back to EA3 and troubleshoot without your site being down for the length of time it takes to fix the problem.

Yes, great, more to deal with that I have no idea about 🤨

EA3 to 4 is an upgrade process available through WHM's automation. You'll need to login to WHM and find the upgrade option. It's as easy as:

Login to WHM

Search "easy".

Select EasyApache 4

There should be a "migrate from EasyApache 3" button:

 

Then to upgrade from your current php to php7.1 or above, configure the new php from Easy Apache, disable the old php, and gracefully restart the server.*

As far as phpmyadmin: cPanel should have a link to this from the cPanel page. Give this link to IPS, along with the username and password (this is usually found in your config files for the Invision Community install).

SSH should also be controllable from cPanel.*

(*Please note that I haven't used WHM in a while. I do most of my work through an SSH connection and dont have a control panel installed.)

Edit: it is advisable that you turn your community to Offline mode while migrating from EA3 to EA4 and during the php upgrade process. Make sure you have backups first.

Edited March 13, 20205 yr by AlexWright

PhpMyAdmin is software that gives you a visual interface to your database.

to see if you have it installed try going to your site with a / and phpmyadmin like this

https://mysite.com/phpmyadmin

Edited March 13, 20205 yr by SJ77