Recently, CodeGuard sponsored and attended Joomla Day NC at the Fuqua School of Business in Durham, North Carolina. We were thrilled to sponsor this event and have the opportunity to talk with Joomla developers, designers and aficionados about their Joomla backup needs.
According to builtwith.com, Joomla powers over 2% of the top million websites. With statistics like that, it’s not surprising that we’ve seen an increase in the number of Joomla backups in the CodeGuard ecosystem. CodeGuard was intentionally designed to be a platform agnostic solution, but we recognize the popularity of content management systems like Joomla, WordPress and Drupal. As a result, we are always looking for ways to improve the website backup experience for individuals and organizations using tools like Joomla to manage their content.
At several points during the day, we had the opportunity to talk with Joomla developers, designers and users. These conversations reinforced for us the value that the CodeGuard file monitoring and ChangeAlert features can provide as part of a Joomla backup. Specifically, by identifying and notifying website owners about all file changes occurring on their site, they are able to act quickly in the event of potential tampering or malicious behavior occurring on their websites.
We mostly spent our time at the conference listening to feedback and asking questions about Joomla backup needs. However, David was invited to participate in a security panel and answer questions from the audience. It was clear based on the questions about SSL, vulnerabilities and malware that website security was a real, every day concern for this group.
All four panelists reinforced that the best security measures are some of the easiest:
1. Have a well secured server or use a hosting provider with good security practices.
2. Keep your Joomla installation and extensions up to date.
3. Always have an off-site backup of your content and database.
More information about Joomla specific updates and security notifications can be found here: http://developer.joomla.org/security
Thank you again to all of the other sponsors, organizers and attendees for making Joomla Day NC a reality. See you next time!
Drupal is one of the most popular content management systems on the web today with over seventeen thousand of the top one hundred thousand sites relying on it as a backbone. With over twenty thousand different modules to customize your website with, it is no wonder that Drupal is the preferred choice of many web developers. However, the big question is – how are you backing up your Drupal site? Sick of messing around with modules, trying to piece them together to play nicely? Wish that there was an all encompassing solution where you didn’t have to rely on different modules for your database and files? If you found yourself nodding your head at any of these, then keep reading, this blog post is for you!
Drupal Backup
Why Do I Need to Backup My Drupal Website?
The internet is full of malicious users and hackers trying to exploit any flaws in any website that they can get their hands on. With big content management systems such as Drupal, there are constant updates to the CMS in order to help prevent any possible security holes. What happens if you neglect to update though? For one web development firm, they saw their client’s site become comprised after they neglected to update their Drupal version. What were some of their lessons learned? Backup your website. Not only do you have to worry about malicious users, but what about if you install a new module or theme only to find out that it broke your website? These are common situations on the official Drupal forums. Solutions to the problem include downloading more modules, clearing caches, and even rolling up your sleeves and getting into the actual code of the module. Talk about a mess.
When it comes down to it, having to restore your Drupal site for any reason is frustrating, disappointing, and generally a pain. Wish there was a better option? There is. We are CodeGuard and we want to give you the peace of mind knowing that if your Drupal site is compromised or broken, you are one click away from being back up and running. Say goodbye to hours of annoying troubleshooting, worrying if you lost your valuable content, and thoughts of why-did-I-even-take-on-this-project-I-was-just-trying-to-be-nice. Take a deep breath. Relax. We will get you back to where you were. This blog post will walk you through all the steps that you will need to perform a full backup of your Drupal website and database through CodeGuard.
Once you login to the CodeGuard site, you will see the “Add Website” button. Choose this option and you will be directed to the initial backup page where you can enter your FTP credentials. You also have the option to choose between FTP or SFTP. As an added security measure, you always want to use SFTP unless your hosting company does not allow it.
Now that you’ve added your FTP server and CodeGuard has successfully connected to it, it is time to choose which files you want to backup. One of the great things about CodeGuard is that you can choose any file that you have access to through FTP. For some, you will want to backup all of these files. However, if you just want to backup your Drupal specific files, you want to choose your Drupal folder. If you are using Rackspace cloud sites, this folder is located under the web/content directory. Once you have chosen your files, choose “Capture Code”.
That’s it! Now your website is scheduled for backup and you can track the progress with the CodeGuard Backup Tracker. Depending on how many files you are backing up, this can take a little bit of time. You will be sent an email as soon as it is done. After the initial backup, CodeGuard will continue to backup your website daily and let you know if any files have changed.
Database Backup
Now that your website is backed up, you will want to complete the full Drupal backup by backing up your database. After logging in again, scroll down to the “Add Database” link on your main page. Choose this option and you will be taken to the database page where you need to enter your MySQL information. However, before you let CodeGuard connect to your MySQL database, you need to make sure CodeGuard is allowed to remotely connect to your database by whitelisting the CodeGuard IP addresses.
On the right site of the “Add Database” page, there are three IP addresses that you will need to whitelist with your server or hosting provider. This is in order to provide CodeGuard with remote MySQL access. If you have cPanel installed on your server, the process is as simple as logging into cPanel, choosing the “Remote MySQL” panel, and placing the CodeGuard IPs in the allowed hosts section.
Now enter your MySQL credentials. You have the option to either connect to MySQL directly or to tunnel over SSH. Once again, this is a security preference and some hosting providers will not allow you to tunnel over SSH. Finish by choosing “Add Database” and you will be taken to your main site page. Depending on how large your database is, this might take a little time. You will be sent an email as soon as the database backup finishes. Now your full Drupal backup is complete!
Drupal Backup Summary
CodeGuard provides you with the necessary tools in order to make sure your Drupal sites and databases are backed up and secure. After this initial backup, you can be confident knowing that your data will continue to be backed up daily and you will receive emails if any of your files change. We hope you choose CodeGuard for all of your future Drupal backup needs!
What are you currently doing to backup your WordPress site? Spending countless hours trying to keep track of bloated ZIP backups? Tinkering around in phpMyAdmin, crossing your fingers that your database isn’t messed up when you try to export it? Not doing anything for WordPress backup? If any of these situations sound familiar, this blog post is for you. WordPress is used by 65% of the top million most visited sites that use a CMS. In a world of user errors, broken updates, and hackers, there is no excuse for your site to not be backed up. We recommend that you let CodeGuard take care of that with our WordPress backup solution.
Backup Before You Update
Updating your WordPress site is essential in order to take advantage of new features and protect against vulnerabilities. Since there are a wide variety of plugins and themes, when you update one, there is a chance that some of your other plugins won’t play nicely with it. Even just updating a theme could potentially bring your entire site down. In fact, “theme compatibility is one of the common reasons why sites break” according to WordPress consultant Judith Kallos. Blogger Doug Eikermann details how important it is to back up your site before an update and takes you through how to manually backup your site (tedious!). The bottom line is that you need to perform a WordPress backup before any update in order to be safe.
Protect Against Hackers
From malicious scripts, to break-ins at domain registrars, WordPress sites can get compromised in a variety of ways. Yoast, creator of a popular WordPress SEO plugin, woke up one day to find his site had been hacked because he had neglected to update a theme. Author Jeff Goins took away several lessons after his blog got hacked, one of which included backing up his blog. In Don Campbell’s post on securing your WordPress site, one of his essential steps is to backup your site. Unfortunately, there is never going to be a way to fully protect your website from getting hacked. However, in the event that your website does get hacked, having a full backup of your site can help restore what you have lost and let you focus on what is really important: your killer content.
As you can see, there really no good reason for your WordPress site to not be backed up. In this blog post, we are going to walk you through exactly how to complete a full WordPress backup that includes your website and database with the CodeGuard application.
Easy to Setup. Easier to Use.
We have made a video walkthrough as well so that you can see for yourself just how easy WordPress backup with CodeGuard is.
What You Will Need
Your FTP server information
Your MySQL server information
Access to cPanel (optional for whitelisting) CodeGuard account
Website Backup
Once you login to the CodeGuard site, you will see the “Add Website” button. Choose this option and you will be directed to the initial backup page where you can enter your FTP credentials. You also have the option to choose between FTP or SFTP. As an added security measure, you always want to use SFTP unless your hosting company does not allow it.
Now that you’ve added your FTP server and CodeGuard has successfully connected to it, it is time to choose which files you want to backup. One of the great things about CodeGuard is that you can choose any file that you have access to through FTP. For some, you will want to backup all of these files. However, if you just want to backup your WordPress specific files, you want to choose your WordPress folder which is stored under the public_html folder by default. Once you have chosen your files, choose “Capture Code”.
That’s it! Now your website is scheduled for backup and you can track the progress with the CodeGuard Backup Tracker. Depending on how many files you are backing up, this can take a little bit of time. You will be sent an email as soon as it is done. After the initial backup, CodeGuard will continue to backup your website daily and let you know if any files have changed.
Database Backup
Now that your website is backed up, you will want to complete the full WordPress backup by backing up your database. After logging in again, scroll down to the “Add Database” link on your main page. Choose this option and you will be taken to the database page where you need to enter your MySQL information. However, before you let CodeGuard connect to your MySQL database, you need to make sure CodeGuard is allowed to remotely connect to your database by whitelisting the CodeGuard IP addresses.
On the right site of the “Add Database” page, there are three IP addresses that you will need to whitelist with your server or hosting provider. This is in order to provide CodeGuard with remote MySQL access. If you have cPanel installed on your server, the process is as simple as logging into cPanel, choosing the “Remote MySQL” panel, and placing the CodeGuard IPs in the allowed hosts section.
Now enter your MySQL credentials. You have the option to either connect to MySQL directly or to tunnel over SSH. Once again, this is a security preference and some hosting providers will not allow you to tunnel over SSH. Finish by choosing “Add Database” and you will be taken to your main site page. Depending on how large your database is, this might take a little time. You will be sent an email as soon as the database backup finishes. Now your full WordPress backup is complete!
WordPress Backup Summary
CodeGuard provides you with the necessary tools in order to make sure your WordPress sites and databases are backed up and secure. After this initial backup, you can be confident knowing that your data will continue to be backed up daily and you will receive emails if any of your files change. We hope you choose CodeGuard for all of your future WordPress backup needs!
Yesterday we found that Bluehost doesn’t guarantee anything for website backup in the Bluehost website backup post. Today we will examine GoDaddy and the guarantees associated with GoDaddy website backup. Below is a screenshot from GoDaddy’s Legal page. Let’s look at what GoDaddy states about GoDaddy website backup.
Directly stated in GoDaddy’s terms of service, it says “You agree to back-up all of your User Content so that you can access and use it when needed. Go Daddy does not warrant that it backs-up any Account or User Content, and you agree to accept as a risk the loss of any and all of your User Content.” So the user, which is the website owner, bears complete responsibility for GoDaddy website backup! Go Daddy does not warrant that it backs-up any account or user content, and by purchasing web hosting, the website owner accepts the risk of loss for all content! Astonishing. In light of the discovery that GoDaddy does not guarantee backups of any kind, what should you do?
GoDaddy Website Backup Options
There are a handful of blog posts across the internet that offer tips for how you can perform GoDaddy website backup – ranging from using homebrew PHP scripts to doing it manually yourself.
1. On GoDaddy’s support site, “metalarcade” inquires how to “download/backup website to hard drive”. He states that he has been running a videogames webiste for a year, and still hasn’t figured out how to back up his site. He wants peace of mind that the posts on his site won’t be lost, and describes how distraught he would be if something ever went wrong. After six more interactions with the technical support representative from GoDaddy, it can be surmised that metalarcade succeeded in backing up his site to his hard drive. This exchange occurred over 4 months.
2. The Webhostinghero.com shares a backup utility that can be used to make the manual backup process for GoDaddy website backup easier. But it is . . . still . . . manual. So that means you will need to do it on a regular basis to backup your site.
3. Blogelina provides a tutorial for GoDaddy website backup, specifically, how to perform GoDaddy WordPress backup. She recommends backing up your WordPress site once per month, and this is how:
Go to My Acct
Then click Hosting (in the left)
Click Launch
In the green toolbar hover over Databases and click My SQL
On the far right click the pencil (edit)
On the top left of toolbar click Backup
Then click OK
Confirm OK
Summary
GoDaddy does not guarantee backups of any kind for its customers. Many customers think that GoDaddy website backups are a sure thing, but this is simply not the case. While GoDaddy may have some type of server backup for disaster recovery, they do not guarantee the safety of your content. What are your options?
We’ve looked at manual backups and touched upon a way to automate things yourself. You can simply write a script, upload it to your site, and access the CRON manager in your GoDaddy Hosting Control Panel. From there, you can set a frequency for the backup. If only this automated website backup was as easy as this sounds! But it isn’t. CodeGuard provides the easiest, most reliable, transparent, and trusted way to accomplish GoDaddy website backup. Input your FTP credentials and MySQL credentials, or install the WordPress backup plugin. After that, CodeGuard does the rest.
We started our week in a new location; charming, historic, edgy, creative, up-and-coming, and filled with all the potential in the world, Atlanta’s Old 4th Ward has been recognized by the NY Times as “a cradle of culinary and artistic innovation and as a symbol of gentrification.” Environment makes a difference.
CodeGuard has continued to grow and mature, and like a teenager, more than just growing into a new body, we’ve started to seek out a distinct identity. We felt it was crucial that we find the right space in the right place. A place that would be our home; a neighborhood we believed in that would help us attract the world-class talent we need to keep growing at the pace we are.
I think we found a fit.
This is our new home. As told by Instagram : ).
There really isn’t much more to tell – we are exuberant about our new digs, more invigorated than ever to provide incredible services for our customers, and – we’re home.
Welcome to the CodeGuard blog! CodeGuard is a website backup service that has been proudly serving the internet since 2010. To learn more about our backup, monitoring, and restore service, visit the official CodeGuard website.
