This dolphin tutorial will show you how to download and backup your Dolphin 7 web site files with cpanel file manager and/or a ftp client.

Another simple method of backing up your Dolphin web site is to use a file manager in your hosting control panel. If your host has cpanel you can use the file manager feature to compress all files and folders into a .zip or other common format. Then, you can download it all in one file to your local pc. Which, you can just hang on to for safe keeping or extract it to your local pc to change, edit, restore, etc.

If your host does not have or use cpanel, they will most likely have a similar file manager or option available.

How to backup your Dolphin 7 web site with cpanel file manager and/or ftp client.

1. Login to cpanel.

2. Find and locate the "Files" area and click on the "File Manager" icon.

Note:
The current cpanel version has both a "File Manager" and "Legacy File Manager". For this particular tutorial the "File Manager" is a better choice.





3. A window will open up prompting you do select your desired directory location. If you have more than one domain make sure you select the right one.

Find "Document Root for:" and select your domain name from the drop down list.

Be sure to check the box for "Show Hidden Files (dotfiles), and then click the "Go" button.

(Make sure you tick or select the show hidden files otherwise you won't be able to download and backup .htaccess files.)





4. You will be taken to your domain directory and you should see all your Dolphin related files and folders.

Click on the "Select all" box to highlight and select all files and folders.





5. After all the files and folders are highlighted and selected, choose the "Compress" icon or link.





6. A window will open up prompting you to select your desired compression type and where in your hosting account to save it to.

For downloading to your local pc a good choice is "Zip Archive" so you can open or extract it later with any standard zip program.

In this screen shot it has automatically selected administration.zip because that is the first folder/directory in the list. I will change this in the next step.





7. I select "Zip Arhcive" for a more common and compatible format for windows based computers.

Then, near the bottom I am going to change the administration.zip to 12-20-2010-backup.zip to easily identify it.

Now click the "Compress File(s)" button to start compressing them to a .zip file.





8. You will see a window that says "Creating Archive". Just wait for it to finish compressing.

If you have a large site with a lot of pictures, sound, or video uploaded it could take a while to finish.





9. Once it completes you will see a screen that says "Compression Results". You can just click the "Close" button when you see this because it's done compressing at that point.





10. Since I named it 12-20-2010-backup.zip in step 7 I simply need to find that in the list of files now. Once I find it I just click on it to highlight or select it, and then click on the "Download" link or icon and save it to my local pc. Then, just wait for it to finish.





11. Or at this point you can use a ftp client like filezilla to download instead. You would simply find 12-20-2010-backup.zip (files on the right column) and right click on the file and select "Download" to your local pc and wait for it to finish downloading.





12. Once you have completely download the .zip to your local pc you can then select the .zip file and delete it from your hosting account to prevent others from finding it or downloading it.

Just highlight or select the .zip file again and then click on delete.





13. Or you can delete the .zip file with a ftp client like filezilla. Simply find 12-20-2010-backup.zip (files on the right column) and right click on it and choose delete.





Additional:

Should you need to restore a single file or several files, you can extract the .zip to your local pc, and then re-upload as needed.

If you have a program that can handle other formats like Tar, GZipped, or Bzipped Tar archives in steps 6 and 7 by all means do so. The average windows based pc user is more accustomed to a .zip file format so I used that in particular in this tutorial.


Remember always download and backup site files/folders and your database:

• Before installing a mod or module.
• Before upgrading.
• Before doing anything you are not sure about.
• Perform Weekly, Bi-Monthly, or Monthly backups for your own piece of mind.

Other helpful Dolphin Tutorials and related References:

How to Backup your Dolphin 7 Database with phpMyAdmin

How to Backup your Boonex Dolphin website

How to Create Automatic Mysql Database Backups

Automatically Optimize your Dolphin Database