How does one back-up before upgrade.......I am novice and old.

thx

Are you a self hosted customer or cloud hosted?

If self hosted, download a copy of your MySQL database and also download a copy of all of your site files. 

Your host might be able to generate a full backup of your account as well. So check with them too for guidance!

or if you have phpMyAdmin you could create a duplicate of your database I usually do so call it prefix_month so that I have a duplicate of my db I'll keep a few around then delete them later

 

Remember the two most precious things are the database and the uploaded content. 

If you're self hosting, then make sure you have daily, weekly and monthly back-ups anyway, most hosts charge a little extra for this but it's worth it for peace of mind.

Otherwise, use your hosting control panel to take a MySQL backup.

It's worth noting that our community cloud plans have regular back-ups, so manual back-ups aren't needed. 🙂