Part 1: creating a test site

Backing up your Elgg site

If you are running a production Elgg site, you should be backing it up. There are 3 parts need to be backed up: the code, the database, and the data directory.

Code

If you are doing anything more than running the core code plus plugins, it is a good idea to keep track of how your code is changing over time and when you deployed particular versions to your production site. This could be as simple as keeping tar files of the different versions or you could use a VCS like svn. The reason for doing this is so that you can quickly restore a production server if there is a crash or if you deploy a change that breaks your site and you want to go back to a previous version.

Database

You should have some kind of automated database backup script running. Running this off a cron job is recommended. It is very simple to export your database but the big question is what to do with the SQL dump file. If it is small, you could just email it to yourself. You could ftp it to a different server. You could save it your server's local disk if it is being backed up. You could save it to a remote disk that has been mounted to the server.

Data Directory

The data directory contains profile icons and your users files. Again, this can be a simple script initiated by cron. All it has to do is tar up the directory, compress it, and then store it someplace. Another option is using the server's backup client though the restore process could take longer this way.

By the way, there is a plugin available in the community repository that does some of this for you.

Up Next: Trying out 1.7 on your Test Site