Losing data accidentally and then recovering them is a part of our computing lives. We have tools to recover lost data from our local hard drive, but what if you lost your website! We don’t have any ready-made website recovery tools, in fact we don’t have full access to the hard drive on which our website is hosted. So, once gone is gone forever! Hence, every webmaster knows how important it is to backup the website.
There are many free and for-fee online backup services for websites, but having a personal backup option is recommended, twice is better than one. That’s where softwares like BackupSF comes into the picture. BackupSF is a software that guides user through wizard to backup website. It not just backs up the files, but it’ll also backup your MySQL database (if you are using it). So, that’s a complete backup. Also, you can either backup to local hard drive or even to cloud (like Dropbox, SugarSync etc) if valid accounts are available.
Using BackupSF :
BackupSF installation is easy & the interface is clear and well guided. To start the backup wizard click on Add Project.
Then a window will pop-up asking you to enter Project name and your website URL. Fill in those details and hit Next to proceed to Step 2.
In Step 2, it’ll ask you to provide FTP details. So, provide them. By default, BackupSF will connect to your webserver in passive mode to avoid firewall issues, if you face any problems then untick the passive mode. After providing necessary details hit Next.
Adding FTP details
Once it gets connected, it’ll move to Step 3, where you have to select desired folders on your server so as to download them to your local PC. To do this, click on ‘…’ button on right.
It’ll then contact the server and will produce the folder structure to you. Now, select the desired folders and click OK.
Selecting desired folders to backup
Folders which you’ve selected will be shown to you. One drawback here is that, once a folder is added to the list, it can’t be deleted. Hope, the developers will add the ability to edit final list in future versions. Anyway, so once the desired folders are added, hit Next. Also, if you don’t want to backup files then you can tick “skip FTP backup” and proceed to MySQL backup phase.
In this step you have to provide the details of your MySQL database. So, provide the details and hit Next.
Providing MySQL database details
As in FTP backup, you can avoid MySQL backup by ticking ‘skip Site backup’. You can also add multiple databases here so as to backup all of them at once.
In the next step, you have to upload scripts so as to backup your MySQL database. More instructions about scripts can be found in the left pane. So, proceed accordingly.
After uploading scripts, hit Next. In the next step, select the databases you’ve added and hit Next.
Then in the final step, you have to configure the backup scheduler and hit Finish.
Scheduling Automatic Backup
That’s it. From now on, BackupSF will run silently in the background and will backup your website regularly.
Backing up website with BackupSF
Conclusion :
Now-a-days many webhosts are providing backup options. If you are on such host then it’s well and good. If not, then BackupSF is for you. It is a great tool for webmasters. Its simple GUI makes complex things easy. Doing backup personally is more secure and you can even face the worst webhost catastrophe. Just upload the backed up files and database back to your server and you’re back in business!
Download : BackupSF
Giveaway :
A big thanks to the developers of BackupSF for giving 15 BackupSF Pro version licenses to our readers for free. With Pro version we can backup upto 25 FTP & MySQL databases. So, if you are interested in grabbing full version license key, then do the following :
- Do anyone of the following (which ever is convenient to you) :
- Leave a comment below
Winners will be declared on April 13th.
Winners :
All the participants will receive the license key as the number of participants are less than the number of available licenses.
Others who missed this giveaway can avail 30% discount by using the below coupon code, on all versions of BackupSF.
Discount Code : BACKUPSF30OFF
You can buy BackupSF from their official store.
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18 Comments
Samuel, I did not have a previous version, so I used the last version. Andrey, the program was able to connect to the database (since it showed me the table names) but nothing was copied to the zip file, it remained empty. I don´t recall exactly what it said (I´ve already uninstalled the program, sorry!) but I think it was something about permissions to access the database. Other thing that you should definitely work in, to improve your product, is in multiple connections, because copying one file at the time takes forever for big sites! Cheers and keep up the hard work!
Thank you for the key you guys sent me! Unfortunately, the program does not work as expected… it is unable to resume connections, so when there is a connection error, it just stops everything. Free hosting is very unreliable (and paid hosting also drops connections once in a while) so I´ll stick with FileZilla for now. Also, database backup did not work, even though the program successfully uploaded the scripts needed. I hope this feedback helps the developers and potential users. Cheers!
Matias, yes, at the moment BackupSF doesn’t support connection resume. We’re working on this issue. In case of a broken file it should skip it and continue backing up. But could you explain what errors did you receive while backing up databases?
Hi Matias, Thanks for the feedback. I faced the exact same problems that you mentioned when I was using version 2.7.3. But, now a new updated version (2.7.4) is released and that fixed all the problems for me. Now, I am able to backup my site.
PS : Remember that you have to delete your site configuration (which you’ve created in older version) and you have to configure it from the scratch again.
Mail received.
Many thanks (Samuel/Morfor/EasySector) & congrats .. all!
Thanks Samuel! Very nice review. Very handy tool to have. Thanks for the opportunity!!!
As a webmaster of many sites, BackupSF, will help keep these websites backed up and secure in case of any issues.
I would really like to have this software as i need it for backing up my company website. please count me in.
Count me in too. Gonna start a blog.
Thank you very much for this very helpful software.
Thank you for offering this program.
Thank you EasySector for donating & thank’s for a great guided review.
I’ve always liked the idea of keeping my own backups.
Not always rely on hosted backups/services, things may go wrong.
BackupSF looks like a keeper.. Backup/Recovery.. step by step.. easy peasy!
Just the way we like it..
http://twitter.com/Bionic_/status/189112252920627200
Backup And Restore Websites – did not know how to do it – thanks for the opportuni´ty to win a license
Sounds like a very interesting program to keep my blog safe! Count me in please!
This looks very useful for backing up websites.
thanks for this review and contest. Although BackupSF is targeted to web owners, i will try my luck. Thanks.
https://twitter.com/#!/paulcrousel/status/188987012940959744
BackupSF is very good. I like this program. I using demo BackupSF:)
please count me in
That’s first time I hear about this software, but it seems to be very nice. It really would help me to backup my website.
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[...] Backup And Restore Websites With BackupSF [Giveaway] Everything you need to back up your site. The MySql database is backed up with the help of scripts uploaded to your server. It is necessary because it is impossible to remotely connect to the database in most cases. You can upload the files back to the server via FTP using any FTP client and restore the database by means of import in PhpMyAdmin To make it as safe as possible, you can create an account at Dropbox, SugarSync or a similar service and specify the synchronization folder as the backup storage in BackupSF. This way, as soon as BackupSF creates a backup copy, it will be uploaded to the cloud. This approach makes your data truly immortal. Homepage : http://www.backupsf.com/ WOT : Good URL VOID : http://urlvoid.com/scan/backupsf.com/ Sucuri SiteCheck : http://sitecheck.sucuri.net/results/….backupsf.com/ Giveaway Details : A big thanks to the developers of BackupSF for giving 15 BackupSF Pro version licenses to our readers for free. With Pro version we can backup upto 25 FTP & MySQL databases. So, if you are interested in grabbing full version license key, then do the following : Do anyone of the following (which ever is convenient to you) : Subscribe to us OR Follow us on Twitter OR Like us on Facebook. Leave a comment below Winners will be declared on April 13th. Giveaway page : http://www.techishare.com/tech-i-sha…upsf-giveaway/ [...]