Hi,

Is there an “official” or recommended way to back up a SilverStripe site?

I am really new to sites built this way and I suppose one needs to backup the SilverStipe installation folder and the database. Should I back up anything else? I am using WampServer and SS 3.0.5, is there a way to automate these tasks?

Thanks!

There is no 'official way' I think. An important thing would be to frequently create a dump of your database, and you'd want to also backup the assets directory, where youre files & images live and your mysite folder. Keep the original install of silverstripe and modules clean and that's all you'll really need to do

I keep a mirror of my installs on my workstation for my own sites, and try never to edit anything online, so i really only need to backup the database, but that means you need to be very consistent, especially with your assets!

Martine

Thanks for the suggestions, martimiz!

Concerning the datatbase itself, I see that the WampServer’s stack saves databases in :
\wamp\bin\mysql\mysql5.5.24\data\

And that the SS database is kept in the SS_mysite subfolder of that folder.

Would creating a backup copy of this SS_mysite subfolder be the same as dumping the SS_mysite database from mysql into a file? I am asking because I feel it would probably be easier for me to automate the backup of a subfolder than the dumping of a database from mysql.

Not the same - these are 'internal' MySQL databatable/index files. A MySQL dump is basically a textfile with a whole lot of MySQL commands in it, that can rebuild a database from scratch.

I'm absolutely not sure if you can just copy these internal MySQL database files to another server or even another MySQL version and always expect things to work. I Wouldn't even try it :)

On the otherh hand: exporting your database from within phpMyAdmin, or another MySQL client, or even using mysqldump from the commandline isn't difficult at all, so...

Ok, I see.

Thanks again for the help!