How To Backup Your GoDaddy Website

Thanks! This works great for a quick, full-site backup. I wanted to timestamp the file and exclude the actual tar file from being included, which was almost doubling the size, so I modified it a bit. If you want those changes, just replace the BackupSite function with:

function BackupSite() { $archname = ‘fullsite_’ . date("Y-m-d-H-i-s") . ‘.tar’; $output = shell_exec(‘tar -cvz –exclude=’ . $archname . ‘ -f ./’ . $archname . ‘ .’); ?> <p>Backup completed<br /><a href=<?php echo $archname ?>>Click here to download your backup</a></p> <p><em>Don’t forget to delete <?php echo $archname ?> and mysql-backup when you’re done!</em></p> <?php }

Thanks again.

[...] February 3rd, 2009 · No Comments I couple of weeks ago, I made a post on How to Backup Your GoDaddy Website. [...]

I am receiving the following error when trying to run yjis on one of my godaddy hosted websites:

Parse error: parse error, unexpected T_STRING on line 60

@wharfratjoe – If you pasted the additional code in above, that is causing your error – it got mangled when I pasted it here. Download the sitebackup.php from the link above that was updated by the original author and it should work fine.

[...] found on google, such as phpshell, cron,  shell script.  To be fair, I did not try this approach, How to backup Godaddy, but it looked like it had the same limitations as the other.  After all that, I gave up and [...]

How can one verify backup, besides untaring file?

Thank you
Worked just fine for me

It is working now. I think I may have used the old file originally. However I recently noticed some php items i had running for php5 stopped working at godaddy. looks like they downgraded the server(s) my site is on to php4.x.

Is there a limit on the size of a website that this tool will allow to be backed up or is this a GoDaddy limitation?? My site is close to 2gigs and every backup I ran with this was only about 161megs when it said it was completed and the tar file was corrupted (broken).

It’s not much about the size of your website but rather the time limit for executing PHP scripts.

Hmmmm… this ALMOST works for me except for the timeout thing. My filesize caps at about 140MB and I need about 250MB. Is there a way to increase the timelimit allowed to execute PHP Scripts?

You could try adding this line at the beginning of the script :

< ?php ini_set('max_execution_time', 300); ?>

or if you’re hosting on a Linux server, you could add this to your .htaccess file :

php_value max_execution_time 3000

But I highly doubt GoDaddy allows their users to override this limit.

Yeah, I tried doing this (and also putting “$max_execution_time = 300;”) but still didn’t work… bummer.

The script works great but I do not get the link to the download at the end. I can go to my ftp client and the file is there but no link on the webpage. Any thoughts? and Thank You!

[...] 15th, 2009 · No Comments In late January 2009, I made a post about a PHP script I developped to help GoDaddy users to backup their website. The script creates a “gzipped tarball” of all the files and directories in your [...]

Mine has two issues…

Like Matt, mine doesn’t end up providing a download link.

Also, it always maxes out at about 150mb. It has at least another 200mb to go.

It’s just not getting all of the files into the tar.

Any idea why? I increased the timeout to 6000 and still just get 150mb.

Thanks!

[...] found on google, such as phpshell, cron,  shell script.  To be fair, I did not try this approach, How to backup Godaddy, but it looked like it had the same limitations as the other.  After all that, I gave up and [...]

Why do it manually?

It would be easier in CRON like this:

Bash: #!/bin/bash
tar -cvvf /$HOME/html/fullsite.tgz

The 1st line is important to tell the CRON daemon what interpreter to use.

Here are more tips straight from GoDaddy:

The Command field is the script or executable that runs at a specified frequency. Click Browse to locate a file in your hosting account. The full file name of your selection is placed into this editable field.

Cron commands are typically script files that have executable permission and specify their interpreter as the first line of the file. For example, a first line of “#!/usr/bin/perl” directs the system to run the perl language interpreter for the file.

Your Shared Hosting account supports the following languages and associated interpreter lines:

* Perl: #!/usr/bin/perl
* Python 2.2: #!/usr/bin/python2.2
* Python 2.3: #!/usr/bin/python2.3
* Python 2.4: #!/usr/bin/python2.4
* Ruby: #!/usr/local/bin/ruby
* Bash: #!/bin/bash

The installed versions of PHP 4 and PHP 5 do not support the interpreter specification in a PHP file. In order to run a PHP script via Cron, you must specify the interpreter manually. For example:

* PHP 4: /web/cgi-bin/php “$HOME/html/test.php”
* PHP 5: /web/cgi-bin/php5 “$HOME/html/test.php5″

Note: In this example script, “$HOME” represents the full path to your Shared Hosting account. The actual path to your account will be provided if you select the script from your account using the Browse button.

Hi John,

Thank you for your valuable comment.

The script was meant to do a one-time backup of an account and in order to keep as simple as possible, I made it useable from a web page so that less experienced users don’t have to bother with CRON.

Am I wrong or your script’s tar options wouldn’t exclude the archive itself from the backup?

The other thing is that you’d have to check regularly your hosting account to download and remove the backup file to prevent it from being downloaded by other users.

You have a great tool, I have just tried it on one of my testing hosting, works like a magic! you really saved me lots of time and efforts with this great code!

Thanks a lot!

Amazing bit of script, worked really well first time. Thanks a lot.

Please excuse my incompetence but should I need to restore my website to the backup file, how do go about doing this?

Thanks,

This is such a time saver! Bless you for giving this free!

This was exactly what I needed. Thanks for a great and easy to use script. It worked perfectly the first time.

[...] Use a PHP script – The Web Hosting Hero has created a PHP script that can take care of backing up your website’s files thru your browser. It basically compresses your site into a tar.gz file for easy download. Download the script and the instructions from The Web Hosting Hero. [...]

I kept having problems with php errors so I just went with a shell script instead. Although the php script looked really great. I think Godaddy’s CRON manager is just picky or maybe it just didn’t like me. In any case, I used a script here http://www.fortasse.com/2010/01/tutorials/tutorial-automatic-backup-script/ and it seems to be working… for now! If it stops, I’ll revert back to php and see what happens. Thanks for the info!

Hi,

Many thanks for the script – this worked just great. All other solutions were timing out for me, but this one worked.

I would also like to see an option to exclude any existing archives from being added to the new archive.

Also – why is “mysql-backup” directory created?

Thanks!

Hi I installed it and clicked backup be I didn’t get a link to download the back-up. Any Ideas?

I am using the script mentioned – but I keep getting crc errors when I use winrar to open the file. Is there any way to make this an rar file instead. I am completely unfamiliar with tar so am totally lost.

Used the script, “MySQL backup directory successfully created.” However, no link returned and where would the file be?

…Yeah it created a new directory “mysql-backup” but no file…

Edit – had to refresh its there!

“there is no straightforward way to backup your whole website at once” That is really bad for a company that hosts websites. You would think they would push backs and a means of making more money. Even is it is on shared hosting; you can by a backup system on Dedicated, vps hosting.

@249 Design: I totally agree.

I want to download GoDaddy Website Backup Utility. Thanks you.

hi,
it’s very valuable script, save lots of time

thank you for sharing

Dinesh

To bad that they do not have a full site backup utility. It really sux..