Overview
This article is an overview of how to back up the most important data of a website. See the following pages to view the latest information on DreamHost's backup policies:
Backing up website data
The following sections explain how to manually back up your website files, database, and emails associated with a specific domain.
Back up website files
You can back up your website files using an FTP client
Once connected to your server, you can then download the website files to your home computer. See this article to understand how to use an FTP client after logging in to the web server.
If you have several GB of data, DreamHost recommends compressing the directories first on the web server. This is not required but will make it easier to download the content since there is less data to process.
To proceed, you will need to create a shell user and log into your server via SSH.
Back up a database
There are different methods you can use to back up your databases. For example:
| Method | Difficulty | Details |
|---|---|---|
| phpMyAdmin | Easy | This method uses phpMyAdmin to download the database |
| SSH | Advanced | This method uses SSH commands to download the database |
See this article for further information.
Back up email
See this article for the different options available to back up your DreamHost emails.