How to Back-Up Your Website Using an FTP Client

You may take the time to backup your hard drive every so often. However, you may have omitted backing up your website with the assumption that it is unnecessary. Webmasters usually don't feel the need to back up websites because they believe that nothing will happen to it and the website is completely safe on the World Wide Web.

Contrary to the beliefs of this popular myth, backing up your website is just as imperative as backing up your system's hard drive. This fact is especially true if your website serves as a major source of information for a large community, organization, or network. There are several potential events that may occur if that may require you to restore a website.

Say, for example, you delete certain sections of your website accidentally, and need to restore that section. Another major reason for needing to backup and restore your website may be because of your web host. You may decide to switch to another web hosting company and the only way to do that is to save your website and upload it to your new domain.

Your web host may delete your web site without notice and you will need to have a way to restore your website. The final reason for backing up your website is because of the numerous cyber hackers on the World Wide Web. A hacker may install a malicious code onto your domain that may cause damage such as data erasure, or data corruption.

The frequency in which you will need to backup your website depends on the importance of your site and the frequency in which you upgrade your web site. If you post weekly blogs on your website, you will obviously need to backup your site at least once a week.

How to Back up Your Website
Method #1
First, you will need to download all of your site files and save them to your computer. The most convenient way in doing this is with the use of an FTP client.

*You will use an FTP client to access your Joomla account. Once accessed, you will navigate to your Joomla application folder and start downloading it.

*With this folder downloaded, you will have successfully backed up your Joomla website.

*You can now restore it by uploading it onto your domain at our convenience.

Method #2
Another, but more tedious method, is backing up your website using Microsoft Word. I would not recommend using Microsoft Word to backup files simply because it is more complicated as you have to save every single web page on your site.

In order to backup a web page using Microsoft Word:
*Click File, and then click Open.
*In menu that appears you need to type in the URL of the intended website you wish to backup.
*Next, save the file by clicking Save.

*Once you have gone through these steps with every single file on your website, you will have successfully backed them up.

*Now, you can easily upload it on your respective domain server any time you need to restore your website.