What happens to your site if your server crashes? You could lose all of your and it might take months to rebuild your store again. Never fear, I will show you how you can back up your files manually in case anything happens. I would also suggest using this in conjunction with our article on manually backing up your database.
Downloading your site
First things first, you are going to need the ftp information to log into your site. When you signed up for your web hosting you should have received an email with all of this information in it. You are also going to need an ftp program, I recommend Filezilla, it is the most popular these days. Once you have it installed, open it up, it should look like this.
As you can see in the image above I have highlighted where you will enter your server information. Once you have it entered you can click quick connect. Normally you will not have to enter anything for the port number, you can leave that blank.
Once you are logged in, depending on how your host is set up, it should look like the image below. All you have to do to back up your site is to right click on the public_html directory in the left pane and select download. If your site is very large this could take several hours.
The only time that your files will ever need to be backed up again is if you
- Add new products to your site
- Install or remove any modules
- Install another template
- Edit your existing template
- Upgrade your shop
- Or if you make any changes to core files
People placing orders or contacting your customer service will not affect the files on your site, all of that information is installed in the database. So if you never do any of the above mentioned things you will only have to back your site up once, which is awesome.
About the Author: Lesley Paone
Lesley has worked in e-commerce for over a decade, and is the founder of dh42. Starting out with PrestaShop and brancing out into other platforms like Shopify. He loves all things e-commerce and loves a challenge, in his spare time he helps moderate several forums on SEO, e-commerce, as well as the PrestaShop forum. If you have any questions for him about any of his articles just use our contact form to contact him.
