Author MarionBlack
2014
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Backup Your Website With FTP

In this video you’re going to learn how to use FTP to back up your website.

FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. It’s a way to transfer files from your computer to your website and from your website to your computer. So it’s a really good way to back up your website, especially if a backup plugin doesn’t seem to work for you.

One of the drawbacks with using FTP is that it doesn’t backup your database. But you can use a plugin to take care of that. I use WP Database Backup.

Download FileZilla from https://filezilla-project.org/ but please take care when you install as it may have unwanted programs bundled with it.

You can also use FTP to verify your website in Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo and Bing Webmaster Tools How to Submit Your Website to Google, Yahoo and Bing Using FTP

If you have any problems connecting then please check out my other video Training: Fix FTP Connection Issues

More Training by Marion Black - Sorted


As always I'm here to help you,


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MozMary Premium Plus
Marion, sitesupport have asked me to use ftp to upload images from now on because of a bug in wordpress [!] and pointed me to Welshy's training, which is back in 2014 with a ton of added notes and people still asking questions - do you have a training on ftp and images specifically?
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MarionBlack Premium
No. I haven't done a training on that but, as usual, there's a plugin that can help it's called "Add From Server".

You'll need to upload the images into httpdocs > wp-content > uploads then create a folder called images.

Put the images into the images folder and use Add From Server to add them to your media library.

I had to use that plugin on one of my sites very recently.
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MozMary Premium Plus
Thanks Marion! Great information!!
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Alphonsus Premium
Marion that was awesome... though I could not complete my site download because on FileZilla, because my FTP password is not available for the next 30 days, my site is quit new.
I just requested for the password, I will complete the process once I have the password.

Just one quick question please: do I always need come to FileZilla to do an update whenever I have new stuff on my site or its just a one thing.
Thank you Marion.
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MarionBlack Premium
The site rubix subdomains don't have FTP access. You can only use FTP on a domain that you own.

I use FTP for a total backup about once a month and I use a plugin to backup whenever I add new content.
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Alphonsus Premium
Thanks for your response Marion.
My site is not a Rubix's site, its a paid site, I was told the FTP password for a new domain is always kept for 30 days for security reasons. but I can request for it if I do need it before the 30 days.
Thanks
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letsrock Premium
Hi, Marion
Great post as always
I just tried to upload a httpdocs.tar.gz to a host, the file size was
570,606 KB and the host limit was 500 meg I think the file expands
out to 1.11G so the upload went good until I hit my the 500 meg limit.
So I used Core FTP to send the file to the host, went well for about
12 minutes then the transfer was stopped, it should have went, without a problem the host has an unlimited FTP transfer limit.
After doing a lot of internet reading about Core FTP, looked like Core FTP was one of the safest to use, but might have problems with large file transfers, I'm not quite sure what the problem is
Maybe you can shed some light on things
Thanks
Jim
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MarionBlack Premium
I know it takes longer to upload unzipped files but that would most likely solve the problem. So unzip the file and upload all the inner files and folders. Or make smaller zip files out of them.
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letsrock Premium
Thanks, Marion
I'm sure this would save me a lot of grief.
What program would you recommend to extract the httpdocs.tar.gz to my windows 7 computer also wondering
what files would be safe to extract to my windows pc

Thanks much for your support
Jim
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MarionBlack Premium
7Zip is open source (free) http://www.7-zip.org/ always take care when installing free software as sometimes they come bundled with extra potentially unwanted programs. (PUPs).
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MattinaM Premium
i did this to transfer my stuff to my website here since WA is now hosting it but i dont know how to do that. i dont know if i should pick a new theme for my site or how to move my content over. i had hostgator point my domain name to WA. when i put the address in the browser it says its under new hosting. i am so clueless and confused right now
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MarionBlack Premium
You'll need to install WordPress on your empty website so go to Site Rubix > Site Builder > On a Domain I Own. Then you can contact Site Support and ask them to help with the move
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MattinaM Premium
thank you so much, Marion. I greatly appreciate that. I had been stressing about it all day yesterday
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BeMyExpert Premium
Marion,

Awesome, simple tutorial and I thank you for it!!

As a newbie I was having trouble with the back-page editor style of building and had ruined my website more than once playing with headers, changing themes, etc.

I ended up buying a front-page editor (beaver builder) and had to use FileZilla to add it onto my site, so I was a little familiar with this process.

With the front end page builder I am now progressing much better. Until I played with a header again in CSS and almost completely lost my site a 3rd time....

After much stress and re-loading templates and themes I cheated the system a bit and I DID get it straightened out!

So... I will be more than happy to keep backups going using FileZilla on a weekly basis.

Thanks again for this tutorial, it means the world to newbies like me!

Christian
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MarionBlack Premium
FTP can be a little slow for weekly backups I usually do it once a month and use WP Clone twice a week. But then I have a lot of websites.
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